Heteroflexibility (8 page)

I lifted a frame from the dresser top, a serious shot. I’d set the self-timer, as always, but I thought it wasn’t going to fire. We’d dropped our smiles and looked at each other, me almost accusing, him bemused. I’d run a copy of the image because the profiles were so striking, but looking at our expressions, I could see myself clearly—annoyed, cynical, expecting things to go wrong.

And they had. Which came first? My cynicism or the unhappiness of our low-joy relationship? The desire to cheat or the opportunity?

I felt like pitching the picture through another window. I glanced back at the pane I’d smashed that first night. Cade had covered it in cardboard.

I set down the photo and rooted through the drawers. He’d apparently moved back yesterday because everything was back in its place. Folded undershirts. Perfectly matched sets of socks. I pushed aside a set of long johns to sort through underwear.

But I didn’t find anything. I’d been wrong on that.

This might take longer than I thought, especially if I had to go through the enormous walk-in closet.

I started with the other drawers. Stacks of sweaters yielded nothing. Winter pajamas, nada.

His collection of t-shirts with logos from concerts and random advertisements barely fit in its compartment. As I pushed them down to close it, I felt something. A hard squarish lump. I pulled it out.

A velvet box.

I sat on the bed, completely unsure if I should open it, what I might find.

A ring for her? Now that she was pregnant, did he plan to propose? Did he want to or had he gotten trapped? I remembered his swagger, the self-pride on that last night when I caught him packing. No, he was right where he wanted to be.

I closed my eyes as I popped it open. The sun filtered through my eyelids, staining the light red through the blood of my veins. Unshootable, like the shadows in a bedroom at dawn, or the grays of night.

I drew a breath to steady myself and looked in the box.

A locket.

The gold heart gleamed against the red backing. I lifted it with a fingernail and flicked it open.

On one side, a photo of me, turned to the side, laughing. On the other, Cade, with a closed-mouth smile. I hadn’t taken these pictures. They might have been at a picnic, last spring, hosted by one of his coworkers. I studied the bit of visible background, trying to remember the moment. Yes, I had worn that white v-neck.

I turned the locket over. An engraving etched the back side. I angled it toward the window.

For Zest, my love. 5 years.

It had been meant for our wedding anniversary—almost two months ago.

And he hadn’t given it to me.

Tears threatened. Cade never put love on a card much less engraved in gold. Something had happened to inspire out-of-character behavior.

I leaned against the bed, the gold now warm in my hand. So the affair had begun between the time he’d bought this locket and our actual anniversary. By the time the date arrived, he hadn’t wanted to give me something sentimental. What had been his gift instead?

Oh, right. A copy of
The Photoshop Bible
. He’d been nothing but supportive of my photography work, perfectly unperturbed when I worked late or missed weekends for a wedding.

Of course. This was when he saw her.

I wanted more. I wanted to know when it began. And I wanted her name. She’d wrecked my marriage. He’d been happy a few months ago, happy enough to have a locket engraved. Maybe he’d even broken up with her, ready to present the gift, when she’d found out she was pregnant.

Shit. Of course. So when had I been working? And where had he been? I ran down to my home office and flung open a box I hadn’t been able to move yet, full of order receipts. I rifled through the folders and tugged out August. Just before our anniversary, I’d spent two days shooting a high school reunion. Exhausting days for very few orders.

But I’d come home, and Cade hadn’t even been here. Back then I didn’t think anything of it, simply going to bed, but now…I walked across the hall to Cade’s office. In his desk, he kept all the credit card statements. Did he buy anything that weekend? Go anywhere?

I found the folders 2006, 2007.

Almost all of 2008 was missing.

Oh, I would not be thwarted.

I sat in his chair and flipped on his computer. It blinked on and presented me with a request for a password.

That dog. He never had a password on the machine before.

I paced the room a moment. He had the memory of a dandelion in the wind. He wrote everything down. I jerked open the desk drawers. Pens, scissors, paper clips.

And a folded index card.

I tugged it out, wanting to laugh. He could have at least hidden it. Sure enough, in his scrawled handwriting, “PW: radiohead.” His favorite band.

I typed it in, and the computer logged me on.

The Quicken accounts were up to date. I scrolled to August. He meticulously listed each expenditure—our anniversary dinner at Chez Zee, groceries, gas, a wedding gift for a friend. Even the locket, $152 from James Avery. Then, oddly enough, several charges that were simply marked, “Stuff.” On the weekend I had been away, he had created five line items in that category.

I right-clicked on “stuff” and printed a quick report of all the entries labeled that way.

Two solid pages.

I held them up to the light, hands shaking now. Hundreds of dollars in charges, thousands maybe, all unmarked.

They dated back eleven months.

That bastard had been banging her for a year.

Chapter 12: Emergency Paps

Rock bottom sounded like bliss. How much lower could I really go?

The Volvo sputtered at the light, as if to remind me—hey, I could quit working too. I glanced down at the gas tank. Close to empty.

I had only change in my wallet. But I did have Harry Histrionic’s check. I would have to cash it to keep driving. Thankfully a branch was close and a gas station waited across the street.

The notion of rock bottom stuck with me as I got my meager cash and spent half of it on gas. I hadn’t been brought up religious, so I didn’t have any spiritual guides. Jesus sounded pretty useful at times like this. Mom had invoked him a time or two, although she’d never dragged me to church.

Grandma had been full of euphemisms. Count your blessings. Every cloud has a silver lining. When God closes a door, he always opens a window. I had missed her funeral, five years ago, off on my honeymoon cruise without a cell phone or email.

Did all the women in my family die young? Grandma had been maybe 62. Mom had been a mere 37. Both had died of cancer.

A car cut in front of me on the freeway and I slammed on my brakes, narrowly missing his bumper. I pulled over, breathing hard. Count your blessings, Zest. I could be dead right now. I could be sick, dying of cancer. At that very moment, a pain shot up my body, originating in the most tender of places.

I almost let my foot off the brake but held on. I knew that pain. I’d been ignoring it for a couple weeks, realizing with each one that I should call my OB for my annual exam, which was overdue.

I knew not to miss. Mom had died of cervical cancer a mere seven weeks after her diagnosis. It was a silent killer. The signs were easy to ignore, especially if, like her, you didn’t bother to go in for pap smears. And hereditary as hell.

I shifted in my seat. Another pain shot up. I’d given up my health insurance to get on Cade’s. Which would be gone with the divorce.

I slammed my hands on the steering wheel. Karma had caught up with me. I’d said and thought too many mean things. I was going to rot away, starting with my sex organs. Just like my mother. We would meet up on Bitch Lane in hell.

Traffic whizzed by on Mopac. It was dangerous to sit here in the narrow shoulder. But it was dangerous to pull out. Dangerous to live. I glanced over the side of the freeway. The barrier was strong, but a truck had gone over the side a year or so ago, blown right through the concrete. The police said there were no brake marks. He’d meant to go sailing into the sky.

I sat back and another pain jabbed me. Death. Accelerating. My breathing came faster. I tried to calm it down.
Don’t overreact.

I threw the car into drive and gunned it, darting into the traffic lanes and blasting through town. My gynecologist was three exits away. I’d make him see me. He’d see me. He knew my family history. Maybe the stress had been the last straw, letting the cancer overtake me.

The car had barely chugged silent before I flung my body out of it and hurtled across the parking lot. Dr. White was the nicest doctor I’d ever known, often running behind schedule because he wanted to make sure every one of his patients felt as through they had their questions answered.

The waiting room teemed with pregnant women in various states of belly balloons. Suddenly I was certain Cade’s woman was here, rubbing her happy bump, and he might even be with her. She would have a baby, and I would be dead.

I felt woozy. I kept my eyes straight ahead as I rushed the front desk. “I need to see Dr. White. It’s an emergency.”

The receptionist glanced at my belly, which I tried to pooch out, this time glad for the extra heft. Maybe if she thought I was pregnant, it would get me in.

“What’s the problem?”

“I’m in pain,” I said, willing the sharp stab to return, to justify my freak-out. It hadn’t happened during my mad run into the office. “Down there.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“I don’t know.”

She frowned. “But it’s possible?”

I hadn’t had sex with Cade in, Holy Cow, two months. How had that happened? Why hadn’t I noticed? “Yes.”

She pushed a form toward me. “Fill this out. We’ll try to work you in.”

The wait was agonizing. Mothers with babies surrounded me. Every time the door opened, I was sure it would be Cade’s woman.

I dug through a pile of magazines and paused on one. Christian Mother.

The cover showed a mom looking up at a dad with a baby on his shoulder. The bold headline said, “Gays threaten traditional marriage.”

I snatched it up, turning to the back. It didn’t have a label. The doctor’s office didn’t subscribe to it. Someone had left it there.

The story began with a hysteria-inducing account of kids being forced to go to a teacher’s lesbian wedding, then kindergarteners being exposed to information about gay lifestyles with books like
Heather Has Two Mommies
.

Since when did five-year-olds learn about sex at all? This was ridiculous. Of course the idea would make parents upset, but it wasn’t true. The article went on to bash Roy and Silo, two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who were given an egg to hatch. Propaganda, they claimed. I dropped the magazine back on the table.

“Zest Renald?” The nurse in pink scrubs scanned the room.

I stood up, expecting the pain again, but it was gone. Great. I’d rushed in here for nothing. The urgency I’d felt an hour before had dissipated. I wasn’t going to die after all.

She led me down the hall. When we got far enough from the reception desk, I said, “You know, I’m feeling a lot better. I think it was a false alarm.”

“You didn’t schedule your annual. Dr. White wants to see you.”

Oh, man. What happened to impersonal health care? I wanted to be a number again, a check box on a form. Dr. White waved at me as he headed toward his office.

Nurse Kim led me into a room. “Let’s do the whole deal since you’re here,” she said, handing me a cotton gown. “Annual exam. Pap smear. Tie up the front!”

Bah. She closed the door, and I turned toward a wall of babies. A couple of the pictures were mine, actually, as Dr. White had kindly referred a few people to me after I sent him some business cards. I compared them to the work of some of the other professional photos, scattered among the home snapshots and printed announcements. I did okay. With more experience, I’d be as good as them. Once I found another studio space.

I changed into the gown and sat on the paper-covered table, another pain shooting up. Thank goodness. I wasn’t crazy. Even though I’d had the pain before, it was so random that I hadn’t paid a lot of attention.

I shivered in the air conditioning. Nurse Kim stepped back inside to take my blood pressure. “So what’s all the fuss about?” she asked. “The front desk said you came in all shaky and convinced you were dying.”

“I’ve been having shooting pains.”

“How long?”

“Not sure. A few weeks, I guess.”

“Does it hurt when you have intercourse?”

The pressure built around the cuff. “I haven’t had sex in a while.”

She nodded and turned her attention to the gauge.

The air hissed out in a long exhale. “Probably nothing major. We’ll take a look.”

“My mom died of cervical cancer.”

She flipped open my chart. “We’ll take a good hard look.”

Two quick knocks on the door were followed by Dr. White’s head poking inside. “Everybody decent?”

“You’re on time today,” I said.

“No babies rudely disrupting my schedule,” he said. “Little buggers never can arrive during their appointments. That’s why I spank them.” He sat on the stool. “So tell me about these pains.”

“It’s random. It shoots up when I’m sitting.”

“Let’s go ahead and lay back and see what we see.”

I fell back on the papered pillow, staring at the ceiling where the staff had tacked a poster expounding the virtues of self-breast exams.

The speculum went in, and I tried not to tense up. Despite having shifted from doom to calm, I began edging back toward certain death. The touch of the swab was so painful that I recoiled.

“Sorry, Zest,” Dr. White said. “It’s pretty red down there.”

So I
was
dying. The cancer was eating away my insides. I remembered my mom, coming home from the first chemo, pale and weak, eventually throwing up and continuing to retch long after there was nothing left to purge. Only then did she tell me she had cancer. The whole week before, as they took tests and diagnosed her condition, I blithely attended ninth grade.

I’d walked up and down the hallway outside the bathroom, listening to the terrible sounds. Finally she’d come out and laid across the sofa. “I’m not going to die,” she said. “So wipe that panicked look off your face.”