Where Love Goes (24 page)

Partly she knew this feeling of hers was an old habit, a carryover from her marriage, when it had made more sense. For all the years she and Sam were together, she had found pleasure in the bounty of her own ripe fertility. In the arid territory of her marriage, she drew comfort from the knowledge that she might at any moment be pregnant—though even this hopefulness diminished in the last couple of years, their lovemaking was so infrequent. There was a reason why Claire was never as exacting as she should have been about birth control. The Russian roulette she played with her sketchy combination of a too-old diaphragm, not always accompanied by spermicide, and the rhythm method allowed for a certain constant state of hopefulness in a situation that would have otherwise seemed unbearably bleak. Chance conception was her one wild card.

With Mickey there was no such prospect. So there were these moments with him when Claire felt old, used up, withered. They’d be at a movie and a baby would cry, forcing its parents to rise from their seats and hurry out of the theater, and even as she could sense Mickey’s relief that it was somebody else’s baby and not theirs, what she was feeling was the opposite. What was a movie compared to a small and perfect person, made by them?

But now that Claire’s with Tim, and knowing how much he wants to have a child with her, this other set of images have come to her.

She and Tim are walking down a street and she is vastly pregnant. Her breasts are almost indecently swollen and her belly enormous. Her angles have thickened and her hips have spread. Her face is full and blotchy. She has to be careful not to laugh too hard or she will lose bladder control
.

The Claire in this dream has developed a fascination for brands of baby strollers. She talks with Tim, who used to be her lover and is now her husband, about when to introduce solids into their child’s diet and how long to let the baby cry at night before picking her up. Her breasts, once the object of his adoration and awe, have a certain sexless utility to them now. Once the baby is born she will pop them out of her shirt at regular intervals, no longer caring much if her nipple is exposed. She wears a brassiere that resembles something her grandmother would have worn
.

When they crawl into bed at night—she and Tim—they are too weary to make love. Once it would have driven him crazy to lie so close to her without being inside her. Now he is simply grateful for sleep
.

•   •   •

It is this transformed and desexed Claire who she sees in her new and terrible fantasy, which is more depressing than the empty pod thoughts ever were.

They’re walking through Harvard Square together—Tim supporting her aching back, Ursula pedaling her pink two-wheeler alongside them, in her thick glasses, with her helmet on, Pete and Sally walking a few feet ahead, pretending not to know them. They are heading someplace like a baby furnishings store, or maybe she is having her urine tested for sugar levels. Suddenly she sees Mickey
.

He is striding on the opposite side of the street, in the opposite direction, with a beautiful woman. (Elegant calf muscle. Porcelain skin.) If he were simply holding her hand it wouldn’t be so bad, but he is stroking her wrist and whispering something into her ear. She knows from the location of the street where they are walking which jazz club they have just emerged from. She also knows where they are going and what they will do when they get there
.

Claire’s knees buckle so dramatically at this point that Tim supposes she has gone into labor. “Children!” he calls out. “We have to get Mom to the hospital.” Mom. That’s what he has called her
.

No, she says. I’m all right, really. She’s standing upright again
.

But it’s too late. Tim’s voice calling out has caught Mickey’s attention. He is looking across the street with a puzzled look. I know that face, he is thinking. But from where?

There is a saxophone playing. Gerry Mulligan, she thinks. She barely remembers them all now. Which was Mulligan? Which was Stan Getz? Which was Coltrane? She sees Tim’s face, full of love and concern, and Ursula’s, so full of hunger and longing. She wants to run away, but she knows if she tries to run she will wet her pants. She hears the laughter of Mickey’s girlfriend, and she knows he has just told her that joke about the time Miles Davis met Chet Baker in Paris. She hears cars honking and Tim’s voice saying, “Hold on, honey, all you need is a cleansing breath.” She hears Ursula asking for Gummi Bears and the hoarse voice of Miles, introducing “Stella by Starlight.” She hears the wailing of a trumpet. And then she realizes it’s not a trumpet at all. It’s a baby
.

G
radually their lives fall into a routine. Weeknights when the kids are home, Claire helps them with their homework and cleans up after dinner, puts in a load of laundry, writes letters up in her office, explaining to potential donors who didn’t respond to her last letter why they should give money to the children’s museum. Nancy may drop by for coffee, and the two of them may do yoga together. Nights when Sally stays on the phone with Travis this may mean waiting until close to midnight.

Once Pete and Sally are asleep, Claire gets into her car and goes the three blocks over to Tim’s apartment, although if it’s a nice night and she isn’t too tired she may walk. She lets herself in the smoky hallway of his apartment building and climbs the steps as quietly as she can, so she won’t wake Ursula. Tim is almost always asleep himself. Sometimes he will have drifted off in front of the TV. Other nights he’ll be in his bed, naked under the covers waiting for her. She peels off her clothes and lays them in a neat pile next to the door, knowing she will need to dress quickly, in the darkness, sometime around four or five
A.M
. Then she climbs in beside him.

This is the best moment. Some nights just the sensation of slipping in behind him and pressing her body up against his back is enough to make her sigh. She slides her foot up his leg. Her hands, wrapped around his chest, stroke his belly. By the time she’s got to his cock, it’s already hard.

No matter how difficult the rest of their time together is, this part always feels simple and good. The way he responds to her, even through his sleep. His total lack of ambivalence toward her in bed. His boundless and consuming desire for her.

“You’re here,” he says. He always sounds surprised and grateful, even though she does this nearly every night. Not fully awake, he begins to kiss her. He finds her breasts. His hands are all over her.

She may mutter something about the evening she has spent. “Pete had a project due,” she says, wrapping her fingers around the shaft of his cock. “George Washington Carver. He left it to the last minute as usual.”

“Tuskegee Institute,” he says, nuzzling her hair. She loves the effortless way her other life falls away from her here in this bed, but she also loves the way he embraces that part of her.

“Pete have a soccer game?” he asks her.

“Tomorrow,” she tells him, cupping his balls. “Ursula?”

“What can I do?” he sighs. “My daughter is hopeless. Some kid kicked her the ball today when she was standing right in front of the goal and it was wide open. She just stood there.”

“How’s your proposal coming?” she asks him.

“Ursula got mad that I wouldn’t play Barbies with her, and she pulled out the plug of my computer. I lost two hours’ work,” he says. He doesn’t add that he has seventy-two dollars left in his checking account.

Claire starts to offer her opinion about how Tim should have handled Ursula in this situation, then stops. She doesn’t want to think about anybody’s children anymore today.

“Come here,” she says. She slides under the covers.

Sometime around one or two they fall asleep. His alarm goes off at four-thirty, and though it’s only Claire who has to get up, he rises with her, puts on his clothes too, although he may just sit naked in the semidarkness first, watching her dress. “I wish I could fix you a wonderful breakfast,” he says. “A goat cheese omelette. Raspberries and croissants. Steamed milk for your coffee.”

She slips on her shoes and runs her hand through her hair. “I’ll call you later,” she says. He misses her already.

U
rsula rises at six. She no longer needs to wake her father. He’s up already, sitting at his computer. He keeps telling her he’s working on a report about estuaries and as soon as it’s finished they’ll have some money again and he’ll take her miniature golfing, but she doesn’t believe that anymore.

“Cereal or toast?” he says. “Waffle?”

She tells him she’s not hungry. This is the second day in a row she has said this, but he hasn’t noticed. If she got very skinny,like one of those girls in Sally’s
Sassy
magazine, then he’d be sorry.

“I hate my hair,” she says. She has heard Sarah McAdam say this in the girls’ room at school. Although Sarah McAdam’s hair is perfect. Long and straight, and golden blond. This is where her father is supposed to say, “You have beautiful hair,” but he doesn’t. He is looking out the window, and she knows who he is thinking about. Ursula breaks off a piece of a Snickers.

“So,” he says, turning back to her. “I’ll be finished with my class by four o’clock today. You want to kick around the soccer ball? We could bring Jenny.”

“Would she come too?” Ursula asks him. Meaning Claire.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “She has to be at the museum. Besides, I was thinking it could be just the two of us.”

He is such a fake. The only time he wants it to be “just the two of us” is him and her. In bed together. Making those noises.

“I know everything that happens,” she says quietly. “There aren’t any secrets.”

He is making her school lunch, laying turkey slices on the bread.

“What do you mean, Urs?” he asks her. He doesn’t look up but she knows she has him worried.

“I figured out you sold our tape player and I figured out why. That’s not all I know, either.”

“What are you talking about, Urs?” he says. He hopes he sounds casual.

“You know what I’m talking about,” she says. She makes kissing sounds on Barbie’s hard, flat plastic stomach. She begins to breathe heavily. “
Uh, uh, uh, uh,”
she fake-moans.

“If you have something to say to me, Ursula, why don’t you talk to me plainly?” he tells her.

“I’ve told you enough,” she says. “I just didn’t want you to think you were fooling me.”

S
he doesn’t like it when you pet her that way,” Ursula is telling Pete. She has ridden her bike over to their house to take Jenny for a walk and found Pete in the front yard, drinking a Dr. Pepper and scratching Jenny’s belly in the sun as he reads his new issue of
Mad
. “That’s not the right spot.”

Pete shrugs and goes in the house. Ursula follows him in, still wearing her bike helmet.

“Also,” she says, “I noticed there were some pieces of dog chow floating in her water. Jenny hates chow in her water bowl.”

Pete is pouring himself a bowl of cereal as she tells him this. Who does she think she is, this twerp coming into his house telling him how to take care of her old dog he didn’t want in the first place? Pete wanted a puppy.

“You miss me, don’t you, Jenny?” she says. She talks to the dog in this high little baby voice of hers that gets on his nerves something wicked. “You wish you lived with me instead of these people, don’t you?”

“Listen,” says Pete, “why don’t you just take her for a walk?”

“She’s not feeling good,” Ursula tells him. “I can tell her hip is hurting.”

“What are you, a vet?” he says to her.

“I know everything about Jenny. I’ve had Jenny my whole life and you’ve only had her a few weeks. You think you’re so great, but you don’t know anything,” Ursula says.

“I know you’re a little brat,” Pete says. He picks up his cereal and his
Mad
and heads to the computer. He turns on Wolfenstein at the loudest volume. The kid actually follows him.

“I’m going to tell my dad you said that,” she says. “You’re going to get in trouble.”

“Jeez, I’m scared,” says Pete, though the truth is, he suspects she probably could get him into trouble, on account of his mom is acting so dumb about these two. He has tried not to think about it, but none of her other boyfriends ever planted stuff in their garden or put up their storm windows.

“My dad broke a guy’s nose one time,” Ursula says. “My dad knows this place on the back of a person’s neck that if you touch it they’re paralyzed.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think your dad wants to commit child abuse,” Pete tells her. “Grown-ups can get in big trouble for something like that.”

“Well, I know something you don’t, anyways,” she says. “I know something I bet you wish you knew.”

Pete has been trying to concentrate on Wolfenstein, but he has to ask. “Oh yeah?” he says.

“I know my dad and your mom are going to get married. My dad bought her a jewel ring. I saw it.”

This is a sickening piece of news. Pete moves the joystick and stares at the screen, but what he wants to do is smash her fat little face under that dumb helmet she’s always wearing, even now in the house.

“Yeah, right,” he says. “I haven’t seen any ring. Don’t you think she would’ve told my sister and me?”

“They wanted to work out the details themselves first,” she says. “Your mom was thinking I might get your room and you’d go down in the basement.” She is making this part up, but it makes sense to her.

“Get out of here, twerp,” he says. “My mom would never marry a jerk like your dad.”

“That’s what you think,” she says. “That’s because you haven’t heard them doing the
F
word like me.”

“Liar,” he says. “Why don’t you just shut up? Why don’t you just beat it?”

“Don’t you even know she comes over to our house in the middle of the night when you and your sister are asleep and takes off all her clothes and gets into my dad’s bed?” she tells him. “Don’t you know she stays there until it’s almost time for school, and then she puts her clothes back on and goes back to your house so you won’t know? You should hear the noises they make.”