Four Wives (10 page)

B
ILL HELD HIS COMPOSURE,
though his stomach was in a knot, his heart racing. With an uncharacteristic intensity, he barreled down the long hallway from Exam Room 1, past the reception area, then the laboratory, on his way to the back entrance.

“How is she?” he asked the nurse who had joined him, having taken the call from the ambulance just moments before.

“I don’t know.”

When they reached the back door, Bill opened it, letting in the warm air. It was just mid-May, and already the temperature was approaching eighty degrees. That did not bode well for a pleasant summer, and this was what he found himself thinking as he waited for the ambulance carrying his wife. But the coping mechanism that on most occasions served him well’thinking of the mundane’was failing him, and his head quickly filled with images of his wife on a gurney. It was how they had started, Love the patient, the situation critical. And it had been a long time since that night, since he’d seen his wife in a fragile state. In time, he had come to see her as the formidable creature she truly was, strong-minded and beautiful. She had endured three natural births, and she’d been a rock through all of them’so much so that he had found himself unnervingly useless. Thinking of her in a vulnerable state felt like a cruel whitewash over the past decade.

“What did they say happened?”

The nurse answered, looking straight ahead. “Just that she fell in the school parking lot.”

As the sirens grew louder, his thoughts ran away. Back pain. A fall. It could mean anything. A fall at the school. Where were his children? The fear was profound, but as the ambulance pulled up to the door, Bill drew a deep breath and turned to what he did best.

“Prep for a film. Call Cliffton, set up an MRI.”

The nurse rushed off, relieved to have been given a task. Bill walked quickly, but calmly, next to his wife as they wheeled her into the building.

“The klutz gene again, huh?” he said to her, hoping for a smile. With her long legs and tall stature, Love had a tendency for tripping over herself.

“Let’s go right to X-ray,” he said next, turning to the paramedic pushing the gurney, never letting go of his wife’s hand. His presence was understated, yet commanding, and without hesitation his instructions were followed. That was how it was with Dr. Harrison, how it had been on that night so many years before, and Love felt a rush of yearning as she looked up at her husband. It had been simple then, when there was nothing standing in the way of her admiration for him, his awestruck infatuation with her.

“The kids are OK. Gayle has them,” Love said, though the pain from speaking those few words sent her head spinning.

Bill squeezed her hand. “I had no doubt. Let’s worry about you now.”

Love pretended to believe him as they lifted her from the gurney onto the X-ray table.

“It’ll just be a minute to set up.” The technician disappeared into the small room behind the glass partition where the controls for the equipment were housed.

Holding his wife’s hand, Bill turned to the paramedics. “We’re set here.”

When the others were gone and the room was theirs, Bill looked at his wife.

“What happened?” His voice was soft, though strained.

“I was just so tired. I couldn’t hold them,” Love answered, reining in the tears.

Bill sighed and looked away. The panic was now unyielding and he found himself at a loss to contain it.

“How, Love? How did you get so tired?”

Losing the battle with her emotions, his wife began to cry. But she didn’t answer.

There was so much more he wanted to say, things that had been building since the baby was born. He knew the work it took to care for their children, being home every night, every weekend. He thought it had been getting easier. And yet the house was a disaster, the car even worse. The look of frenzy never left his wife’s face. And now this. There was no doubt he was failing her, or maybe it was their life that was failing her. He just had no idea why.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Love. Let’s just get this done.”

Bill draped the iron apron down her right side then left the room for a moment. He returned to help roll her onto her stomach, drape the apron once more. The X-rays were taken quickly. As he wheeled his wife down the hall to an exam room, he watched a calm detachment wash over her.

“It’s probably just a muscle spasm,” he told her, now firmly entrenched in the role of doctor. “There was no acute injury, which is good. I don’t think there’s damage to your spine, but we’ll know for sure in a minute. Could be a tear. That’s the worst-case scenario. Let’s hope it’s just sore tissue.”

Love nodded, her focus on a small water stain that had spread across the white partitioned ceiling. She knew all of this from Dr. Stallard, and the guilt from not telling Bill added unbearably to her misery.

Bill squeezed her hand one more time. “I’ll see if the films are ready.”

Love let out a breath when he was gone from the room. Closing her eyes to shut out the bright track lighting, she tried not to believe any of this. The pain was profound’worse than it had ever been’and there was the matter of her children, especially Baby Will, who would not know what to make of the world from a place that was not his mother. And more than anything, she knew it had been more than her back that had collapsed on that patch of grass.

There was a soft knock on the door before Bill came in, the X-rays in his hand, and Love felt a sense of alarm at the misplaced formality. When did her husband ever knock before walking in on her? As he hung the films on a white-lighted panel, Love could sense the frustration concealed beneath the doctor facade.

He flipped on the light behind the panel, then exhaled deeply.

“The spine looks fine.”

Love nodded as she found herself crying yet again.

Bill turned to look at her. “It’s probably just the muscle,” he said, confused by her reaction.

Yes,
Love thought.
It’s just the muscle. Just sore tissue. Just three children and a small house and a life that is quickly unraveling.

There was another knock at the door. Bill reached behind him and turned the handle.

“They wanted to see you.” It was Gayle, holding Baby Will, with Jessica, Henry, and Oliver lined up behind her.

“Hey, bud,” Bill said, reaching for the baby, then the other two. “Hey, guys. It’s OK. Come on in.”

Now in his father’s lap, looking into the face of his mother, Baby Will wiggled to reach her. When he could not break free, he started to wail.

“I still want to do an MRI at Cliffton,” Bill said, now standing with the squirmy baby in his arms. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“We’ll be just fine,” Gayle said.

Bill disappeared with the baby, leaving Jessica and Henry standing on either side of their mother. “See, she’s OK,” Gayle said to the children, whose heads just peeked over the table.

“Mommy?” Henry’s voice was shaky. Then he started to cry.

“I’m fine, Henry. Really. I just have a tired muscle in my back.”

Henry nodded through his tears, though the prognosis did little to erase the image of his mother on the ground’or the fear that had taken root inside him.

“Henry,” Gayle said, her voice steady. “I need your help. Can you do something for me?”

Henry nodded.

From the yellow counter, cluttered with cotton balls, tongue depressors, and other innocuous medical supplies, Gayle grabbed a stethoscope and attached it to Henry’s ears.

“Very gently, put this on Mommy’s chest and listen to her heart. Can you hear it?”

Henry nodded, his tears beginning to subside.

“Good. Now keep listening.”

Next, she pulled a hairbrush from her purse and put Jessica to work untangling Love’s pony tail. It was so like her to know just what to do.

Love looked up at her friend, but said nothing as Gayle studied her face. Within seconds, Gayle’s cheerful smile morphed into a look of deep concern. With nothing but friendship between them, an urgent need was unmasked, and Gayle could see clearly now the extent of Love’s pain.

“I’ll be right back.” Gayle excused herself and stepped outside. She followed the sounds of Baby Will, who had gone back to babbling, until she found Bill standing beside one of the nurses in the office.

“Can I talk to you?” she said, pulling him into the hallway.

Bill filled her in on Love’s injury. Impossible to tell the full extent, though the MRI would help. Bed rest, pain medication, maybe some physical therapy would be required, but there was little else to do but wait for it to heal.
Probably.
Gayle listened until he was through. Then she asked the one question the doctor had failed to answer.

“That’s a good plan for the injury. Now, how are we going to take care of your wife?”

“N
OT YET,
” J
ANIE
K
IRK
whispered, in between the sighs. She wasn’t ready for the sprint to the finish line.

The man was breathing hard, his movements quick, awkward. Somewhere between removing her clothing and fondling her breasts, he had stopped kissing her and closed his eyes. Then there’d been more fondling, the self-gratifying kind she had at home, followed by a token effort farther down. Janie did her best to send the signals, placing his hands where they needed to be, keeping him from climbing on top of her, with one word playing in her head.
Take, take, take.

In all fairness, the first night had been fast, explosive. It was not unreasonable for him to bring on a repeat performance. Still, this was
not
the first time in the dead of night, the full moon and sheer thrill bearing down on them. It was the middle of the day, a naughty encounter in an unlikely place’the small solarium in the back of her house. The sun was sifting through the tinted glass, warming their skin. A soft blanket weaved between their limbs, entangled in their embrace. There needed to be kissing, lots of wet kissing. Then touching’soft, lingering, mouth-watering touches leaving her with a delicious ache for more. She wanted to be savored, devoured, every inch of her treasured for the beautiful creature that she had worked so hard to become. That her lover wanted nothing more than a quick release was as familiar as it was bewildering.

“I’m dying here,” he said.

They always said that. At nineteen, her boyfriend had said it.
You ’re so hot, you have to help me out.
Like being attractive, turning him on, somehow obligated her to hand over her body. At twenty-one, her summer fling had said it.
You were so sexy on that dance floor,
his hand on top of her head trying to elicit some oral gratification. Then, of course, there was the one who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Your body is
incredible,”
he said. It was a valid attempt, luring her with flattery. But after twenty years with the same man, Janie had no interest in being someone’s sexual fantasy. After twenty years, she wanted someone to be hers.

“Just wait,” Janie said, trying to lure him, educate him.

Maybe it was springtime. Primal impulses. She’d seen it at work on the farm animals at the Hunting Ridge Nature Center. Her kids had loved the place when they were younger’the tiny barn houses, chickens roaming wild. On most days, it was good, clean fun’all the crap aside. But not in the springtime. She’d learned that the hard way. From April through the end of May, it was simply not a place for children, for anyone as far as Janie was concerned. The females were in heat’pigs, goats, cows, horses. Even the damned butterflies. In pen after pen, squeals resounded as the females ran in terror, chased by their horny male counterparts. They would always get caught, pinned from behind by the bigger, stronger male creature. Then would come the yelping, a few thrusts, and the dismount. With their noses to the wind, the males would start sniffing out their next conquest, while the females, Janie could only imagine, thanked their creator that it was over.

It had only taken one visit for Janie to swear off the place when the ground began to thaw. She would not expose her kids to what were, essentially, acts of animal violence’no matter how necessary it all was to the circle of life. Maybe they didn’t notice it, or understand what they were seeing. Maybe it was she who didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to be reminded that the evolution of mankind from its animal origins had, essentially, failed. That the only things separating us from those pigs in the mud were expensive tailored suits.

It was no use. His whining had killed her mood. With her eyes glued to the ceiling, Janie let him finish. Like a schoolboy at the sound of the bell, he climbed on top of her. Three thrusts and a dismount. He tried to nuzzle into her neck, she could feel his smile against her cheek, and she let him stay there. Briefly. Until she could no longer stand the sensation of the life being sucked right out of her by his pleasure.

“You have to go,” she said.

As he collected his clothes, Janie sat with her knees to her chest, the blanket wrapped around her. How different he appeared to her now, in the light of day, the evidence laid out clearly before her. There was no escaping the disappointment that was rushing through her. For years, she had dreaded sex, and she’d seen it in other wives. It wasn’t often’the skin of deception that grew over the course of their stints as housewives could be thick. But now and again she would catch a glimpse. A woman at the nail salon having her feet done’a look of sad remembrance on her face at the feel of the warm pulsating water, the firm hands massaging her calves. Or the face of a mother nuzzling her infant, holding on to the intensity of that baby love, that primal emotion that will not be suppressed. Janie was not fooled by the smiles, the polite conversations. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d witnessed a passionate kiss in the town of Hunting Ridge.

Still, it hadn’t always been that way with Daniel. She would not have written off her sex life that easily. No, in the beginning it had been hot, the kind of hot reserved for teenagers, those freewheeling hormonal hostages. And later in their marriage there had been’not fiery’but intimate, sensual moments. Soft caresses, less conservative positions. He had held out longer to please her. That it faded over time was, she presumed, the natural progression in a relationship’each party giving more than they wanted to lure the other in. It had been that way with other men. Accepting that sex would become more mundane, less interesting as the tension died, was the cost of doing business, the deal that she’d made on her wedding day. What she hadn’t bargained on was feeling like an anonymous warm body every time her husband needed a fix.

The man in front of her was another story.

When he finished dressing, he leaned in to kiss her.

“Just go now,” she said.

He looked back at her, surprised.

“What’s wrong?”

Things to say popped into her head as a matter of course.
Nothing, I just think we should end this before it goes too far … I really like you, but we can’t take the risk … blah, blah, blah.
She opened her mouth, then stopped herself. Looking at him without a trace of kindness, she said instead, “I have this at home.”

Pulling away, he looked back at her carefully, studying her face. Then he smiled and folded his arms.

“OK. I see what you’re saying.”

They were silent for a moment, though their eyes were engaged, and the feel of him searching for her thoughts recaptured her interest.

“Next time, we’re going to a room. And not in Hunting Ridge. There’s a motel off the Thruway in Cliffton.”

Janie smiled, curiously. “Why Cliffton?”

He did not hesitate before answering. “Because I can’t fuck you properly in Hunting Ridge.”

Janie felt a breath rush in, then a blushing around her cheeks. She looked away from him, but could not hold back the smile. With one sentence, one beautifully defiant, irreverent statement, he had begun to redeem himself. And this time she knew exactly what she wanted to say.

“When?”