Bitter Sweet (63 page)

Patricia’s mouth dropped open and her cheeks coloured.

She glanced toward the waiting room at an old woman who’d looked up from her magazine at Eric’s outburst.

I’ll see what I can do.’ Patricia pushed back her rolling chair.

While she was gone he paced and felt like a goddamned heel, remembering how Pat used to have a crush on him.

Tapping a thigh with the rolled-up papers, he nodded to the white-haired woman who gawked back as if she recognized his face from the WANTED posters.

In less than sixty seconds Patricia Carpenter returned to the front, hotfooting it to a step behind a long-striding giant in a flapping white lab coat who pointed a finger at Eric as he strode past the receptionist’s window. ‘Get in here, Severson!’ He flung the door open, his face grim with anger, and thumbed toward the end of the hall. ‘Down there.’

Eric walked into Neil Lange’s office and heard the door slam behind him.

‘Just what the hell do you mean by coming in here and harassing Pat? I’ve got a mind to toss you out on your ass!’

Eric turned to find Neil with his hands on his hips, his lips pinched, his dark eyes irate behind square horn-rimmed glasses. He was the second generation Doc Lange, only three years older than Eric, had delivered all of Mike and Barb’s babies, had diagnosed Ma’s high blood pressure and had at one time dated his sister, Ruth.

Eric took a deep breath and forcibly calmed himself. I’m sorry, tcu. you’re right. ne s rgnt. I owe her an apology and I’ll make sure she gets it before I leave, but I need to have you explain something for me.’

‘What?’

‘This.’ Eric unrolled the computer printout and handed it over. ‘Tell me what this bill is for.’

Neil Lange began reading it from the top down, giving it his total attention. When he reached the halfway point, he glanced up at Eric, then read on.

Finishing, he let the sheets fall into their accordion fold and looked up. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘It’s for my wife.’

‘Yes, I see that.’

‘And it’s from some goddamned hospital in
Minnesota
!’

‘I see that, too.’

In silence the two men stood face to face. ‘You know what I’m asking, Neil, so don’t give me that look. Does D & C mean what I think it means?’

‘It means dilation and curettage.’

‘An abortion, right?’

Lange paused a second before confirming, ‘Yes, it looks that way.’

Eric stepped back and collapsed to the edge of Lange’s desk, catching himself with both hands, dropping his chin to his chest. Lange folded the bill with his thumbnail and dropped his hands to his sides. His voice softened.

‘You didn’t know about it until now?’

Eric shook his head slowly, staring at the brown flecks in the thick Berber carpeting.

‘I’m sorry, Eric.’ Lange put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Eric lifted his head. ‘Could there be some other reason for her having it?’

‘I’m afraid not. The lab indicates serum pregnancy and surgical tissue II - that always means abortion. Also, it was done in a county hospital rather than a private or religious affiliated hospital, which generally don’t perform abortions.’

Eric took a minute to absorb the anguish before drawing a deep sigh and pushing to his feet. ‘Well, now I know.’ He reached tiredly for the bill. ‘Thanks, Neil.’

‘If you want to talk, call Pat and set up a” time, but don’t come barging in here this way again.’

Chin down, Eric raised a hand in farewell ‘Listen, Eric,’ Lange went on, ‘this is a small town. Talk gets around, and if what I hear is true you need to get your life in order. I’d be more than happy to talk about it, even away from the office where there are no interruptions. If you prefer, forget about calling Pat. Just call me, will you do that?’

Eric lifted his head, studied the doctor with a look of flat despair, nodded once and headed out. At the reception desk he stopped.

‘Listen, Pat, I’m sorry for that...’ He waved the scrolled papers towards the other side of the window. ‘Sometimes I can be a son of a bitch.’

‘Oh, it’s all right. It -’

‘No. No, it’s not all right. You like salmon? Smoked maybe? Steak?’

‘I love it.’

‘Which kind?’

‘Eric, you don’t have to -’

‘Which kind?’

‘All right, steaks.’

‘You’ll have ‘em. I’ll drop off a package tomorrow, by way of apology.’

He drove home slowly, feeling bleak as the November day. Cars piled up behind him, unable to pass on the curving highway, but he rolled along unaware of them.

Endings - how sad they were. Particularly sad to end eighteen years of marriage with a blow like this. His child . . . Jesus, she’d disposed of his child as if it were of no more consequence than one of her outmoded dresses.

rc sarea at me mglway, wondering if it had been a boy or a girl, fair or dark, with any of Ma’s features or the old man’s. Hell, it would be riding a trike by now, begging to have stories read, riding on his father’s hand high overhead, learning about the gulls.

The white centre fines became distorted by tears. His child, her child, who might have grown to be a fisherman or a president, a father or a mother someday.
Nancy
was his wife, yet she cared so little about him that the life he’d sired was absolutely dispensable. Eighteen years he’d hoped, a good half of that time he’d begged. And when it had finally happened,
Nancy
had killed it.

She wasn’t home yet when he arrived so he put her office in order, growing angrier by the minute now that his first spate of melancholy was gone. He packed her suitcases, unpacked them and packed his own (he wasn’t going to give her a single thing to come back at him on), loaded the truck and sat down at the kitchen table to wait.

She arrived shortly after one p.., coming sideways through the door with her arms full of packages, her hair oriental black.

‘Wait till you see what I bought!’ she exclaimed above the crackle of bags as she set them on the cabinet. ‘I went into the little shop next to the -’

‘Shut the door,’ he ordered coldly.

In slow motion she looked back over her shoulder.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Shut the door and sit down.’

She closed the door and approached the table warily, drawing off her leather gloves.

‘Whoa, you’re really bummed out about something. Should I get my whip and my chair?’ she cajoled.

‘I found something today.’ Icy-eyed, he tossed the hospital bill across the table. ‘You want to tell me about it?’

She glanced down and her hands stalled, pulling off the gloves. Her surprise registered as a mere tightening of her brow before she disguised it beneath a look of hauteur.

‘You were going through my desk?’ She sounded affronted.

‘Yes, I was going through your desk!’ he repeated, his voice rising, his teeth bared on the final word.

‘How dare you!’ She threw the gloves down. ‘That’s my personal file, and when I leave the house I expect -’

‘Don’t you get high-handed with me, you lying bitch!’

He leapt to his feet. ‘Not with the proof of your crime lying right there in front of you!’ He jabbed a finger at the bill.

‘Crime?’ She spread a hand on her chest and affected an abused expression. ‘I go off to get my hair done, and you dig through my personal files, and I’m the criminal!’ She thrust her nose near his. ‘I’m the one who should be upset, dear husband!’

‘You killed my baby, dear wife, and I don’t give a goddamn what the law says, in my book that’s a criminal act!’

‘Killed your baby! Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘In 1986. D & C. It’s all there on the bill.’

‘You have a fixation with babies, Eric, do you know that? It makes you paranoid.’

‘Then explain it!’

She shrugged and spoke nonchalantly. ‘My periods were getting irregular. It was a routine operation to straighten them out.’

‘Done secretly, in some hospital in
Minneapolis
?’

‘I didn’t want to worry you, that’s all. I was in and out in one day.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Nancy. It only makes you more despicable.’

‘I’m not lying!’

‘I showed the bill to Neil Lunge. He said it was an abortion.’

She stretched her neck like a gander, her mouth taut, and said nothing.

‘How could you?’ t aon t navc to stand Ilec and listen to this.’ She turned away.

He spun her around by an arm. ‘You’re not walking away from this one, Nancy,’ he shouted. “You got pregnant, and you didn’t even bother to tell me You made a decision to snuff out the life of our baby, the baby I begged you for years to have. Just - p.o!’ He brandished a hand. ‘Scrape it out, like you’d scrape out some.., some garbage. Killed it without a thought for what I was feeling, and you think you don’t have to stand here and take this?’ He grabbed her by the coatfront and pulled her to her toes. ‘What kind of woman are you anyway?’

‘Let me go!’

He jerked her higher. ‘Can you imagine what I thought when I found that bill? What I felt? Do you even care what I felt?’

“You, you!’ she shouted, shoving him away and stumbling backward. ‘It’s always you. What you want, when it’s time to decide where we’ll live! What you want when we decide what we’ll live in! What you want when we crawl into bed at night. Well what about what I want?’

He advanced nose first. ‘You know something,
Nancy
? I don’t give a damn what you want anymore!’

‘You don,t understand. You never did!’

‘Don t understand! His face turned red with rage as he controlled the urge to smash fist into her beautiful face.

‘Don’t understand you having an abortion without telling me? Jesus Christ, woman, what was I to you all these years, nothing more than a good lay? As long as you got your orgasms that’s all that mattered, wasn’t it?’

‘I loved you.’

He pushed her away in revulsion.

‘Bullshit. You know who you love? Yourself. Nobody but yourself.’

Coldly, she demanded, ‘And who do you love, Eric?’

They faced each other in deliberate silence.

‘We both know who you love, don’t we?’ she insisted.

‘I didn’t until you became unlovable, and even then I came back here and tried to make a go of it with you.’

‘Oh, thanks a lot,’ she said sarcastically.

‘But you lied then, too. You were no more pregnant than I was, but I was so gullible I believed you.’

‘I lied to keep from losing you.”

‘You lied to suit your own twisted needs!’

‘Well, you deserved it! The whole town knew you were the father of her baby!’

The fight left him and guilt tempered his voice. ‘I’m sorry about that,
Nancy
. I never meant to hurt you that way, and if you’re thinking I did it deliberately, you’re wrong.’

‘But you’re going to her now, aren’t you?’

He watched her mouth turn sad and said nothing.

“I still love you.’

‘
Nancy
, don’t.’ He turned away.

‘We each made some mistakes,’ she said, ‘but we could start from now. A new beginning.’

‘It’s too late.’ He stared out a window without seeing a thing. Standing in the kitchen of the house he’d loved and she’d hated, he felt momentarily overwhelmed by sorrow at their failure.

She touched his back. ‘Eric...’ she said imploringly.

He swung away from her and plucked his leather jacket from the back of a kitchen chair, pulling it on.

‘I’ll be at Ma’s.’

The zipper closed with the sound of finality.

‘Don’t go.’ She began to cry. To the best of his recollection he’d never seen her do that.

‘Don’t,’ he whispered.

She gripped his jacketfront. ‘Eric, this time I’d be different.”

‘Don’t...’ He removed her hands. ‘You’re embarrassing both of us.’ He picked up the hospital bill and put it in his pocket. ‘I’ll be seeing my lawyer tomorrow and giving him the order that either he gets this thing pushed through fast or I’ll find another lawyer who will.’

‘Eric -‘She reached out one hand.

He put a hand on the doorknob and looked back at her. ‘I realized something while I was waiting for you today. You shouldn’t have a baby and I should never have tried to talk you into it. It would have been wrong for you, just like it’s wrong for me to be without a family. We changed - somewhere along the line both of us changed. We want different things. We should have seen that years ago.’ He opened the door. I’m sorry I hurt you,’ he said solemnly. ‘I mean it when I say I never meant to.’

He walked out, closing the door softly behind him.

 
There were no secrets in a town the size of Fish Creek.

Maggie heard about Eric leaving
Nancy
within days and lived on tenterhooks after that. She found herself stopping and cocking her head each time a vehicle passed on the road up above. Whenever the phone rang her heart shot into double time and she scurried to answer it. If anyone knocked on the door her palms were sweating long before she reached the kitchen.