Between Husbands and Friends (32 page)

When the door is shut, I rush to it and turn the lock. Chip carries the CF gene, I think. This is overwhelming. This is almost more than I can bear. I make my way to the sofa. Burying my head in my hands, I sit as stunned as if suddenly just hit by a car. I can’t think. I can’t feel. I’m numb.

The sound of knocking on the front door rouses me.

Stan sweeps in, shaking the rain off his poncho like a puppy. His long-strapped briefcase hangs from one shoulder; his gold-rimmed glasses and all his metal rings and studs glitter against his pale skin.

“What’s up with you?” he replies. “You look like shit.”

It feels good to smile. “Thanks a lot.”

“I left a lot of messages on your machine …”

“I know. I’ve just been so busy. How are you? Have you had breakfast?” Stan is so
normal
I could hug him.

“I’ll have a Coke if you’ve got one.”

I lead him into the kitchen. “I’ve got that, and some bacon and eggs, too. Or English muffins. I’ve brought back some great wild beach plum jam.”

“Lucy. Forget the food. What’s up?” He drops his briefcase on a chair with a thud.

I close the refrigerator door. I fight for composure, then turn to face him. “They think Jeremy has cystic fibrosis.”

“Who’s
they
?”

“The physicians at Children’s Hospital.”

“Why do they think that?”

“They did a test. A sweat test.”

“Is it an accurate test?” Stan’s a great believer in all things scientific.

“Yes.”

Stan looks at me. “That sucks, man. Is there a cure? Can anything be done?”

“No cure. Lots can be done, depending on the case. The only hopeful thing is that it’s one of these weird diseases that can be mild or severe.”

“And which is Jeremy’s?”

“They think it’s a mild case, but really they don’t know. They can’t predict. We can only wait and see.”

“How’s Jeremy taking it?”

“I haven’t told him yet. There are some other complications …” I’m dizzy. I sit down, suddenly, in a chair.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Not to be unkind, but have you looked at yourself in the mirror recently? You look like some kind of vampire has been at you.”

I touch my head. “My hair …”

“You’ve lost a lot of weight, Lucy, and your face is drooping down like a bloodhound’s.”

His concern undoes me. I wonder why Margaret didn’t tell me that I look so bad; she’s always my worst critic. My laughter gets out of control, turns to weeping.

“Hey, Lucy.”

“Everything’s gone to hell, Stan, and it’s all my fault.”

“Okay.” He pulls up a chair on the other side of the kitchen table and folds his hands on top of the table. “That’s a start. What’s the rest?”

I take a deep breath, and tell him. My affair with Chip. Jeremy’s illness. Max’s anger, Kate’s anger, the confusion that is about to fall over our children. When I’m through, Stan shakes his head. “Man. This is kind of biblical.”

“Yeah,” I snort, “Old Testament version.”

“You know, you ought to come with me to AA.”

I blink. “What?”

“AA. You know what AA is.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not an alcoholic yet. Although, give me time …”

“Or ACOA. Adult children of alcoholics. They’ve got some really good ways to help you straighten out your thinking.”

“Like ‘Let go and let God’? I don’t think so, Stan. I’m not feeling like God and I have a great working relationship these days.”

“You might want to develop one. I mean, it seems to me, you’ve lost your best friend and your husband in one fell swoop—”

“You think I’ve lost them for good?”

“You can’t predict the future. But you’ve lost them for today and probably tomorrow and you need some help. And you know what else? You should focus on work. Write?/Right is part of your life. Besides, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Max and you will get divorced, that Write?/Right will become crucial to you financially.”

“What you say makes sense, Stan. But right now … today …” I meet his eyes. “Stan, right now just doing this, sitting here, looking at you … it’s the best I can do. It’s all I can do.”

Stan’s brow furrows with concern. His voice cracks when he asks, “How can I help?”

“Just keep Write?/Right going. And give me some time.”

“I can do that,” he says.

When Stan leaves I feel more in control. There are things I must do to keep the house functioning like a normal home; gratefully I run a load of laundry and begin to clean the kitchen.

It’s Jeremy’s first day of being in school until three o’clock; kindergarten classes were only half day. Will he be tired? Will he have picked up some viruses? Schools are swamps for viruses. I know I’ve got to be less cowardly about Jeremy’s condition. It’s just that I feel so overwhelmed right now, it’s all I can do to keep my head above water.

I’ve got a basket of warm-smelling clean laundry in my arms when I see Max’s van pull into our drive.

All right, I say to myself. All right. Breathe. I watch him slam out of the van and stride toward the house.

His face is so grim that I know what he has to tell me.

I open the door.

Surprised, he flushes. “Are you going out?”

“No. I just saw you through the window, and I …” We’re so awkward with each other.

A sheen of sweat dapples his upper lip. “We need to talk.”

“Yes. Would you like a beer? Some tea?”

I’m so formal, acting like some kind of damned
hostess
, and it surprises me when Max walks past me, into our kitchen. He runs the cold water tap and fills a glass. He drinks.

I stand in the doorway, looking at my husband’s back.

His voice is rough. “I don’t carry the CF gene.”

There is no good way to do this. And I have to do this. “Chip was by earlier. His results came back. He does carry the gene.”

“Well, there you are.” Max slams the glass down on the counter. “Chip has two sons. I have none.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s as true as black and white, Lucy.”

“Max, will you sit down? Can we talk about this?”

“There’s no point hashing it over,” Max says. “We can’t change things. What’s done is done. We need to go on from here.”

“Yes,” I say eagerly, leaning toward my husband. “Exactly. And we need to think of Jeremy—”

“I’m filing for divorce.”

“Max.”

“I want joint custody of Margaret. All our assets split fifty-fifty, except of course you keep the Nantucket house.”

“But what about Jeremy?”

“What about him?”

“Max, God damn it! He’s your
son.
”

“Okay,” Max says brusquely, “I’m out of here. I really just stopped by to pack up some things. I’ll stay at the newspaper until I find an apartment. You’d better be prepared; we need to put the house up for sale.” He brushes past me, just inches away, as he goes by out of the kitchen and up the stairs to our bedroom.

I follow him, torn between anger and disbelief. Max takes a duffel bag down from the closet shelf, tosses it on the bed, begins to fill it with underwear, shirts, socks.

“Come on, Max,” I say softly. “You can’t stop being Jeremy’s father. Not just like that. Not like flicking a switch.”

“But that’s exactly what happened,” Max replies, shoving his clothes in together ruthlessly. “And
you
flicked the switch, Lucy.
You
.” His face flushes as he speaks.

“I know that. I know. And I’m so sorry, Max, I can never tell you how sorry I am that I’ve hurt you. But we’re still a family, and we’ve got to think about Jeremy first of all. He’s only a little boy. He’s going to have enough to deal with with this damned condition. You can’t desert him now.”

“Yes,” Max says, “I can.” He pulls the zipper so fast it shrieks. He hoists it and turns to leave.

I block the doorway. “Remember that summer, Max. Remember the things you said to me. You didn’t know if you loved me. You implied that you were going to leave me, because you wanted a son.”

“God,” Max says quietly, his face bleak. “Isn’t it ironic.”

A sob catches in my throat and tears course down my face. “Oh, Max. Please. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave us. We need you.”

Tears rise in Max’s eyes. “Every time I look at Jeremy, I see living proof of the affair you had with Chip. You can’t expect me to live with that.”

“Max, Jeremy isn’t, isn’t
evidence
!” I sputter, fighting for the right words. “He’s a little boy. Our little boy.”

“
Your
little boy,” Max says. His face is wet with tears.

“Oh, God, Max, I’m sorry.” I cannot bear the pain on his face, the pain that radiates from him in a sheen like a kind of cramped energy, almost a visible light. I want to hold him, to try to diminish that pain. I reach out.

“Don’t, Lucy,” Max says, and steps sideways, away from me, as if my touch is distressing. He walks around me, down the stairs, down the front hall to the door.

I need magic. I want spells and incantations. I want someone to
help
me. I can’t do this by myself. This is how a criminal feels when she has pleaded guilty and stands all alone, when the judgment has been given and the gavel dropped down. This is how she feels, full of self-loathing
and a smothering terror, unable to breathe, choking on her very life.

I have lost my best friend. I’ve lost my husband. I will lose this house. My children’s lives will be snapped in half. I want to scourge myself, to drag my nails down my face.

With trembling hands I punch in Chip’s number at Masterbrook, Gillet, and Stearns. After waiting on hold for a few moments, I hear Chip say hello.

“I’m sorry to phone you at work.”

“Quite all right.”

“I thought you should know. Max got his results. He doesn’t carry the CF gene.”

“I see. Well.” He clears his throat. His voice has the formality of one who is not alone in a room. “We should get together to discuss this as soon as possible.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call you this evening.”

“All right.”

“Lucy. It will work out, you know. It’s going to be okay.”

But he’s wrong, it’s not true, it won’t be okay, my son has cystic fibrosis, my husband wants a divorce, and I am the one who’s brought all this disaster down on all the people I love.

I pace through the house like a tiger, full of a terrible wrath, weeping, talking to myself in a voice I scarcely recognize as my own. When I pass through the living room, Midnight and Cinnamon crouch down, fur bristling, then streak from the room and up the stairs to hide.

I’ve got to get control of myself. Right
now
, for I hear the front door slam so hard the house seems to shake. I hear fierce whispers.

I compose myself, taking several deep breaths, then step out into the hall.

“Margaret?”

My daughter stands over my son.

“Go to your room, Jeremy,” she says.

“You’re not the boss of me,” he shoots back.

“What’s going on?” I demand.

Margaret glares at me with blazing eyes. “Tell him to go to his room, Mom.”

I stare at her, dumbfounded.

“Or I’ll say it all in front of him,” she says.

My heart sinks. My fear turns into despair.

“Jere-Bear, I’ve made some peanut butter crackers for you. And some grapes. Why don’t you take them into the den? You can watch TV.”

He stares at me, suspicious. I seldom let the children watch television after school; he knows something is up. He also knows that Margaret and I are more powerful and in bad moods; he might as well grab this chance while he can.

“Okay,” he concedes grumpily. “But Margaret is still not my boss.”

“Let’s go into my study.”

Margaret follows sulkily. I shut the door and sit at my desk. She sits in what I think of as Stan’s chair. She’s wearing an old faded polo shirt of mine over a pleated plaid miniskirt and Doc Martens. She sets her school notebook on her knees and clutches it for all she’s worth as she glares at me.

“What’s up?” It could be about school. It could be.

She speaks in an angry rush. “Matthew stopped me after school. Kate told him that you had sex with Mr. Cunningham. He says Chip might be Jeremy’s real father.”