Nearlyweds (6 page)

H
ey, hon.” Nick barely looked up from the televised basketball game as I came through the front door of our cozy apartment. “How was work?”

“Busy.” I shucked off my bulky parka and stooped down to greet the cats, Maisy and Tate. While they jostled each other trying to get my attention, I tried to get Nick’s. “Did a ton of business before noon. People are finally starting to try the premium foods, and I managed to move about half of the Kongs I ordered last week. If we keep going like this, I might be able to hire an assistant soon…”

But he wasn’t even pretending to listen. His eyes were glued to the TV as he raised his can of Foster’s to his lips.

“Honey,” I said gently. “Remember when we talked about using glasses instead of drinking straight out of the can?”

“Uh-huh.” He grabbed the remote and upped the TV volume.

I sighed and raised my voice to compete with the sports announcer’s. “And remember how we talked about using coasters?”

“Sorry.” He swiped at the wet rings on the coffee table with his sweat sock–encased foot.

I opened my mouth again, then realized that I had started to sound exactly like Bree on
Desperate Housewives.
While I hung up my coat, I tried to ignore the clutter and potato chip crumbs surrounding my husband and silently repeated sage snippets of advice from all those relationship books I’d read before the wedding. What was that question I was supposed to ask myself when I was tempted to nag my spouse?
Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?

I wanted to be happy. Definitely. Happy all the way.

Except was it so much to ask to have a clean carpet, too? How hard would it be for him to use a bowl or a napkin, or—

“I fixed the shower,” Nick announced, turning his attention back to me as a commercial flashed onto the screen.

“You did?” My irritation melted into relief, then guilt. See? He helped out around the house. Besides, he put in long hours at his father’s law office all day. The man was exhausted. Why was I always so quick to find fault?

“Yep. Ran to the hardware store after work.”

“Thank you.” I unwound my wool scarf and draped it over
the coat hanger. “You’re my hero. I need a hot shower like nobody’s business.”

“No problem.” He made a vague kissy noise, then put his beer can back down on the coffee table.

Without a coaster.

“What?” he demanded when he saw the expression on my face.

“Nothing, nothing.” I rubbed my upper arms. “Just warming up. Hey, could you do me a favor and start dinner while I shower? What do we have in the fridge?”

“Not much.” He buried his hand in the bag of chips. “We’re pretty much down to yogurt and broccoli.”

“You didn’t get a chance to go to the grocery store?” I had planned to go on my lunch break, but he’d taken the shopping list with him this morning, insisting that he would do it.

“I went to the hardware store.” He sounded offended. “I can’t do
everything.
”

“I know, but…”
Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?
“Okay, no problem, we’ll order pizza.”

“Whatever.” Another handful of chips. “I’m not that hungry.”

I filled the cats’ dishes on my way to the bathroom, where I got undressed, pulled my hair up into a ponytail, and reached for the faucet.

“Um, Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“About the faucet? Where’s the knob to turn on the hot water?”

“It broke off,” he yelled.

I opened the bathroom door and poked my head into the hall. “Yeah, I’m aware of that. But you said you fixed it.”

“I did. That’s what the wrench is for.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see a massive red wrench lying on the corner of the bathtub.

“You’re kidding.”

“No.” He finally roused himself from the couch and came into the bathroom to show off his handiwork. “All you do is clamp this part down on the metal nub here”—he adjusted the wrench claws around the scrawny silver bar that used to anchor the faucet knob—“and turn.” He twisted the wrench with both hands, unleashing a torrent of warm water. “See? And if you want it hotter, you just bring it back and twist again!” He stepped back, beaming with pride.

I did my best to smile back. “Wow. That’s very…resourceful.”

“Yep. The landlord offered to call a plumber, but I told him not to bother.”

“So, uh, that’s it? There’s no plumber coming?”

“You don’t need a plumber when you’ve got a
man
around the house.” He swaggered back to the couch in his beer-stained hockey jersey.

I want to be happy, I want to be happy.
“Well, thanks, honey.” I climbed into the tub and made a mental note to phone the landlord in the morning.

As the hot water streamed over my tired, aching muscles, I pressed my palms against my lower back and stretched. Nick’s repair job might not have been the most conventional solution, but the shower worked; that was the important thing.

This is what marriage was all about: letting the small stuff slide. All the books said so. I needed to overlook the petty crap like moisture rings on my—scratch that,
our
—coffee table and focus on the big picture. I needed to stop imposing my insanely high expectations on other people. Maybe I could even stop imposing them on myself. Nick and I could have a good marriage. Not like my parents. Not like my sister. We’d be the ones who beat the odds. The guy who wouldn’t look twice at me in high school would still be with me on our fiftieth anniversary.

“Hey, did you ask your dad about brunch this weekend?” I asked when I ambled back into the family room with a makeshift towel turban on my head.

He shook his head. “Forgot.”

“You work with him all day. How could you forget?”

“It’s a law office, Case. He doesn’t want to waste billable hours making brunch plans.”

“Okay, then I’ll just call your mom tomorrow.”

He jerked his gaze away from the basketball game. “Do not call my mom.”

“Why not? Last week, she said she wanted us to come over for brunch, and I don’t want her to think I don’t like them.”

Big eye roll. “They know you like them. Trust me. Every
one knows you like them. We don’t have to spend every single weekend eating French toast with them to prove it.”

“Well, excuse me for trying to be a good daughter-in-law. You should count your blessings—what if your mom and I were fighting all the time like Erin and David’s mother?”

“Then I’d get to sleep in on Sundays.”

“Nick!”

“What?” He muted the television and slouched down into the sofa cushions. “It’s not enough that you married me? You have to marry my parents, too?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You have my last name, okay? You got me. I spend the whole week listening to my dad gripe about how I dropped out of law school; I should get weekends off.” His blond hair flopped over his forehead as he withdrew further into the depths of the couch.

“I know you and your dad are having a hard time right now, but—”

“Yeah, we are. Nothing’s ever good enough for him, and I don’t need that from you, too.”

I want to be happy, I want to be happy.
“I understand. But family is important, Nick.”

“Really? Then why don’t we have brunch with
your
family on Sunday?”

I just looked at him.

“You’re always talking about family time. Why can’t we ever spend any time with yours?”

“You know how my family is,” I said tightly. “Don’t drag them into this.”

“Fine. But you’re the one who had to get married. You said that’s what you wanted, but nothing’s ever enough.”

“What are you saying? I bludgeoned you into marriage?”

He shrugged. “You’re the one who proposed.”

“I did not!”

“You bought the ring.”

“That is not fair! You asked me what kind of diamond I liked.”

“Yeah, and the second I did, you dragged me to the mall, picked out a ring, and paid for it yourself.”

“You said you were low on cash,” I gritted out. “Should I have let you run up your credit card bill?”

“You should have waited until I asked you properly.” He couldn’t meet my eyes. “The old-fashioned way.”

“Really.” The ends of my wet hair were creeping out of my turban and soaking through my robe. “And when would you have gotten around to proposing the old-fashioned way?”

He shrugged.

“When?” I pressed.

“I would’ve.”

“Right. If I hadn’t bought this ring, we’d still be in relationship limbo!”

“Well, you got me, okay? You got what you wanted.”

“Lucky me.” I marched into the bedroom, pulled on clean
jeans and a sweater, and crammed my feet back into my hiking boots.

“Where are you going?” he asked as I pulled on my parka. “What about pizza?”

“Get your own damn pizza,” I snapped. “The old-fashioned way.”

I stomped down the stairs toward my truck. On the way I checked the mailbox. Sandwiched between the phone bill and my new issue of the
Whole Dog Journal,
I found an envelope bearing the seal of the State of Massachusetts. I glanced at the typed address, then up at the windows of our apartment, where the television’s flickering glow outlined the silhouette of the man whom yes, truth be told, I had sort of proposed to.

I folded the envelope and crammed it deep into my coat pocket.

Right now didn’t feel like the best time to reopen negotiations.

F
at, wet flakes of snow sifted down from the darkening clouds as I locked the office door behind me and headed for the parking lot. David and I had spent a long day apart after last night’s standoff—I’d checked into a hotel in Pittsfield, where I’d been so furious that I’d actually sent off an email to Jonathan, one of my friends from residency, asking him to test the waters and find out if there might still be a job for me in Boston.

God help me if any of this ever got back to Renée.
How are you two going to give me grandchildren if you aren’t spending any time together? Your job is too stressful, Erin, I keep telling you. What’s the point of being a doctor these days, anyway? It’s all red tape and HMOs. Hurry up and start a family before it’s too late. Let David wear the pants for a change.

She was right about one thing: My job
was
stressful. My
last scheduled appointment had been at four thirty—Ava Schaltzi’s chicken pox—but then Kelly Fendt had rushed into the waiting room with her toddler bundled up in a blanket. She’d demanded to see a doctor. Immediately. Christa at the front desk had been so freaked out that she’d called me away from my paperwork to deal with the situation.

“I know she’s a hypochondriac, I know she’s a pain in the butt,” Christa had said nervously. “But she says her son has whooping cough. She says he’s coughing up
blood.
I put her in exam room B.”

So I’d given up all hope of squeezing in a session at the gym and agreed to assess the situation. Little Carter Fendt had smiled up at me from behind his pacifier.

“He’s been coughing,” Kelly reported. “All night long. He stopped breathing for a minute, Dr. Maye. I swear he did.”

“Mm-hmm.” I scanned his chart, then pressed my stethoscope against his chest to listen to the lungs. No wheezing, no rales, no signs of any distress. “I don’t hear anything to be too alarmed about…let’s take his temperature.”

“Good idea.” Kelly looked vindicated. “My husband says I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I know my child, Dr. Maye. A mother has a sixth sense about this sort of thing. And I can’t bear to see my little boy—”

“Was it a barking cough?”

She considered this. “No, I’d say it was more of a rattly cough. I could hear it in his chest.”

“Mm-hmm. No fever,” I concluded, glancing at the thermometer. “He was coughing up blood, you said?”

“Well…” She fiddled with the silver chain around her neck. “He was definitely coughing up fluid. Last night.”

I made a note of this in the chart. “What color?”

She hesitated. “What color?”

“What color was the fluid? Green? Yellow? Brown?”

“Oh. It was yellow, I guess. Kind of clear.”

I jotted this down. “Okay. Have you noticed anything else unusual? Diarrhea? Rashes?”

“His face was very pink when we came in from sledding the other day. Oh God, what do you think it is? Whooping cough? Bronchitis? Pneumonia?”

I smiled patiently, no easy feat given the fact that this was her third unscheduled “emergency” this month. “It may just be a cold.”

“Oh no.” She threw up a hand. “You didn’t hear him coughing last night. The poor darling was fit to die.”

“Well, he is a bit congested, but he’s up to date on his shots, and since he’s been immunized against whooping cough—”

She lifted her chin. “Are you saying I don’t know what’s wrong with my own child?”

I kept my expression bland. “Has he been coughing so hard he vomits? Does his face change color?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Okay, then. Try a vaporizer in his room tonight. Maybe some mentholated ointment.”

Her eyes widened in horror. “Aren’t you going to give him antibiotics?”

“Not yet. I’ll call you tomorrow, and if he’s not feeling better, we’ll try a different approach.”

“But he needs a prescription! I know my baby and—”

“Dr. Lowell will be on call tonight,” I said firmly. “You can let us know if he gets worse or has any trouble breathing.”

“He’s having trouble breathing right now!” she cried, gathering up Carter, who was happily blowing spit bubbles and helping himself to a fistful of goldfish crackers from his mother’s pocket. “No offense, Dr. Maye, but you’re fresh out of medical school, aren’t you? I’d like to see someone with a little more experience.”

“Dr. Lowell’s with another patient.”

“I want antibiotics, and I want them now. You obviously don’t understand what it’s like to be a mother.”

No, I didn’t, I reflected as I trudged through the fresh snow to my beat-up old Toyota. Maybe if I did, I could understand the primal urge that drove Kelly Fendt and, for that matter, Renée to intervene even when it might do her children more harm than good.

I climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and waited for the engine to warm up. My black loafers were soaked through with melted snow, and the hem of my gray pants was dirty from the parking lot slush. This was my wardrobe now: sturdy shoes, tailored pants. Ugh. When I first
met David, I’d been wearing a black sequined tube top and an obscenely short camouflage skirt at a bar in Boston. I’d just finished my first semester med school finals, and my roommate and I had decided to kill our few remaining functioning brain cells with alcohol.

I’d been shimmying on the sticky bartop at the Cat and Canary under a strobe light, blissfully ignorant of the years of Talbot’s and Ann Taylor stretching out ahead of me, when I tripped on a shot glass and stomped on the bartender’s hand as he served up a frosty glass of Guinness.

“Sorry,” I’d breathed, crouching down to examine the damage. “Did I break your proximal phalanges?”

He’d tried to smile through his wince. “Nothing a cast and six months of intensive physical therapy won’t cure.”

I winced and prodded his fingers. “Can you make a fist?”

He’d rolled his eyes. “What, are you a doctor in a red G-string?”

I’d flushed. “Oh my God. You can see up my skirt?”

“Yeah. So can everyone else.”

I’d hopped down behind the bar and tugged my hem down. “You better put some ice on that hand.”

He stood back and watched me fashion a cold compress out of a dish towel and the cubed ice in the cooler. “So
are
you a doctor, or do you just have a lot of practice dealing with wounded bartenders?”

“I’m a med student,” I’d admitted sheepishly. “First year.
Don’t tell my professors I’m administering treatment without a license, okay?”

“As long as you don’t tell
my
professors about the bartending gig.” He laughed at my expression. “I’m in the pharmacology program at Northeastern.”

“Then why are you…?”

“My fellowship doesn’t exactly cover rent prices in Boston. It’s either bartend or take a monthly allowance from my mother, so here I am.” He grinned. “You’d understand if you knew my mom.”

“And I just mangled the hands you use to do research.”

“Consider it karmic payback for all the jokes I’ve made about physicians’ handwriting.” He flinched as I pressed the makeshift ice pack against his swelling hand. “With any luck, I’ll be able to hold a beer again someday.”

“Is there anything I can do to ease your pain and suffering?”

He leaned forward, just inside the perimeters of what I considered my personal space. “You could give me your phone number. Just in case I need my lawyers to track you down for the huge malpractice suit.”

I scribbled down my name and number on a cocktail napkin.

He squinted at the writing. “I’m not even going to say anything about the penmanship.”

“Wise.” I struck a pose. “’Cause I have three-inch heels and I’m not afraid to use them.”

“No kidding.” He laughed again. “I’m David. I’d shake your hand, but I’m kind of scarred for life.”

And that was that. We’d been inseparable since that night, growing closer as we swapped the bar scene for nights at the opera, camouflage skirts for preppy blazers, torrid sex in our drafty Boston apartment for lukewarm cuddling in our fixer-upper starter home in Alden.

We were fated to be together, clearly. I mean, an ass-shaking pediatrician and a martini-shaking pharmacologist? What were the odds?

As the Toyota’s vents started coughing out heat, I dug my cell phone out of my purse and dialed our home number. One of us had to swallow our pride and take the first step. The situation with Renée could be worked out. David loved me, he would understand that we couldn’t let his mother invade our—

“Hello?” A familiar voice picked up on the other end of the line.

I grimaced.

“Hello?”

“Renée?” I strangled out.

“Erin.” From the tone of her voice, I knew she’d heard about yesterday’s fight.

“Yes, hi. Listen…is David there?”

She took a moment to let the full force of her disapproval sink in. “He’s still at the hospital.”

Then why are you in our house, answering our phone?

“I dropped by to make sure he got a decent meal,” she continued as if reading my mind. “Since you’re swamped with work. Again.”

“How thoughtful,” I oozed. “But as it happens, I’m actually on my way home from the office, so—”

“Perfect,” she oozed right back. “There’s plenty to go around. I’m making a chicken stir-fry. With peanut sauce.”