The Other Life (7 page)

Now, in the car, Quinn tried to envision life a day, week, or year beyond the birth of this baby, but it was impossible. She looked out the window. It was a lot to take in.

THAT NIGHT, WHEN LEWIS GOT HOME FROM WORK, HE STILL wasn’t ready to talk. He’d had a rough day. One of his drivers was in the hospital after a bad accident, and it left Lewis shaken. After dinner, he went straight upstairs to check the data on his weather station, a digital box that connected to a barometer, an altimeter, a rain gauge, and other equipment on the roof of the house. He sometimes told Quinn that accurate weather forecasts were important for his business, as it helped to know the road conditions his drivers would face in the coming hours. But she had always sensed it calmed him to know exactly what the heavens were about to deliver.

The next morning was more of the same. Lewis simply wasn’t ready or willing to talk. It wasn’t the first time he had shut down, heaven knows, but Quinn was usually able to accept his reticence with patience. It was his way of gaining some control when life got stormy. He couldn’t will the rain clouds from the horizon, but he could control how he would react to them.

Quinn watched from the window in Isaac’s bedroom as her husband walked toward his car. Georgette must have been watching from her own window as she trotted over to chat with him. Quinn turned her attention back to her son.

“You have to pick up your pajamas, Isaac.”

“But the hamper is full,” he said.

The hamper. Of course. Quinn had been ignoring the laundry altogether, as she couldn’t face going down into that basement. But the clothes were piling up, and they were getting harder and harder to avoid.

Later, after Isaac left for school, Quinn dumped the dirty clothes into a laundry basket and carried it down to the first floor, where she paused. The thought of what had happened in the hospital bathroom after the sonogram made facing that ironing board harder than ever.

If she entered the basement today, would she go into a similar trance? Would the lure of escape be too much to bear? She looked back at the pile of dirty clothes in the basket. Maybe she should just take them to a Laundromat and be done with it.

Ridiculous, she told herself. I’ll run downstairs, throw the clothes in the washer, and run back up. It’s not like I have no control.

Quinn picked up the cordless phone and dialed her mother-in-law, whom she owed a call. She kept it tucked under her chin as she lifted the basket and went into the basement. If she stayed on the phone while doing the laundry, she reasoned, it would keep her from being tempted to open the ironing board.

“Sweetheart!” her mother-in-law said. “How are you? I just spoke to Lewis.”

“You did?”

“Poor thing. He’s beside himself.”

“He told you about the sonograms?”

“Of course.” Her tone implied that she was offended Quinn even asked, but that was her way. Lewis’s mother had a huge heart, but was so insecure she perceived nearly every statement as a challenge she had to defend against. Tiptoeing around her insecurities sometimes left Quinn exhausted.

“I’m glad he told you. I’m sure you were a great comfort to him.”

“All I did was listen, really. That’s what you have to do with Lewis.”

Arlene loved giving Quinn the Lecture on How to Talk to Lewis. Quinn switched the phone to her other ear. “Does Don know?” After being divorced from Lewis’s father for almost twenty years, Arlene had remarried. Don was an affable guy—a mattress salesman with a painfully corny sense of humor.

“It’s not like it’s a secret, darling.”

“I didn’t—” Quinn sighed. “Never mind. How did Lewis sound? Was he very upset?” She opened the washer and started dropping in clothes.

“I’ve never heard him like that. He could barely speak.”

“He was crying?”

“Heavens, yes.”

Quinn measured the liquid detergent and poured it around the agitator onto the dirty clothes. “What did he say?”

“Not too much. Just told me how scared he was.”

She closed the washer door and turned it on, confused and surprised by what her mother-in-law had told her. Lewis had been unable to talk to her, and yet opened up to his mother to the point where he cried and told her he was scared? She glanced over at the built-in ironing board, her heart racing.

“Quinn? Are you still there?”

“I’m here, Arlene. Sorry.” She swallowed hard and walked up the stairs. “What were you saying?”

“I just want you to know I’m here if you need to talk.”

After getting off the phone, Quinn tried to convince herself it really wasn’t any big deal that Lewis had opened up to his mother and not to her. Perhaps he just didn’t want to alarm Quinn with his own worry. That made sense, didn’t it? Lewis was always trying to protect her. But later, when his sister called to say she had been talking to Lewis all morning about how upset he was, Quinn couldn’t take it anymore. She told her sister-in-law she had to go and dialed her husband’s office.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“I don’t understand why you can talk to everyone but me,” Quinn said.

“Was I supposed to keep all this a secret? I thought my family had a right to know.”

“I just don’t want you to close me out.”

Lewis promised he wasn’t closing her out, but said he needed to hurry off the phone for an important appointment. Quinn hesitated before saying good-bye. Something about his tone tripped her suspicions. He was either hiding something or telling an outright lie. But he insisted he was rushed, so she let him go without pressing it.

 

 

“OH, HONEY,” Georgette said as she threw her arms around Quinn. “I’m so sorry you didn’t get better news from the doctors yesterday.” She had, of course, dropped by unannounced.

“So you know,” Quinn said.

“I spoke to Lewis earlier.”

“Of course you did. C’mon in and tell me what he said. Apparently it’s the only way I’m going to find out what my husband is thinking.”

The two went into the kitchen, where Georgette helped herself by making a cup of tea using a mug that Quinn didn’t usually offer her guests. It had been a present from Eugene, who gave it to her the day they met at Baston’s Books.

It was a vivid memory for Quinn. Eugene had arrived at the store with his publicist, who approached Quinn to discuss the logistics of the event while Eugene was waylaid by fans. The crowd surrounding him was comprised of mostly women, which she understood. Though he was a far cry from handsome, he had a certain curmudgeonly charisma. Eugene had made a career of his crankiness, and each woman liked to think she was special enough to be the one who could break through and become the one shining beacon in his dark existence . . . if only he would get to know her. Being aware of this didn’t make Quinn any less susceptible to his churlish charms. In fact, she had to fight the urge to push her way through the crowd and make her own specialness known.

But she had her chance after the event, when they had a few quiet moments to chat. He pulled out the coffee mug, which was a promotional item imprinted with the cover of his memoir,
Eugenics
. It showed a photograph of Eugene looking down at his crotch, surprised. It was a joke photo—the top half was Eugene’s body, and the bottom half was the lower region of a Ken doll. The idea was that his reproductive organs had been removed, hence the title.

“Bet you don’t have one of these,” Eugene said as he showed it to her.

“No, but I was tempted to pick one up the other day at Tiffany’s.”

Eugene actually laughed at that, and Quinn was struck by how his face transformed when he smiled. His eyes disappeared into tiny slits, and the word that occurred to Quinn was
mirth
. When this man felt it,
you
felt it. Sure he was a sourpuss by nature, but underneath it was a reservoir of joy he guarded like a miser. When he decided to share it, you felt privileged indeed.

Eugene pulled a Sharpie from his pocket. He turned the mug upside down and wrote on the bottom,
To Quinn, who’s my cup
of tea.—Eugene
Ray
.

Score.

Quinn looked up and watched as Georgette dipped her teabag into the mug and then fished it out with a spoon.

“I was so surprised,” Georgette said as she wrapped the string around the teabag and squeezed out the moisture. “I didn’t know you two were thinking about terminating.”

“Is that what Lewis said?”

“He said it was an option.”

Quinn wiped down the counter, which was still sticky from the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich she had packed for Isaac’s lunch. “I see.”

“Did I say the wrong thing? You know, honeybun, you don’t have to do anything you don’t—”

“It’s not that,” Quinn said. And it wasn’t. She could accept whatever it was Lewis was feeling. But the thought that he could open up to everyone but her was too agonizing. Lewis was the one person in this world who loved her more than he needed her, and the idea of seeing him drift away was too much to bear.

 

QUINN DECONSTRUCTED, NO. 2

I’M NOT GOING IN, QUINN THOUGHT AS SHE OILED THE HINGES on the ancient ironing board, unless I know for sure I can get back. I’ll just stick my head in, take a look, see what it’s like. If it’s a one-way journey I’ll stay here, but at least I’ll know. Just in case.

She put down the can of WD-40 and once again grabbed the top of the ironing board. This time she pulled it open three inches and closed it, testing the hinge. She did that a few times to let the oil work its way into the mechanism.

Okay, she thought. Now. Quinn closed her eyes and pulled the ironing board all the way down. She stood there a moment with her lids shut tight, feeling the energy from the other side, sensing her life with Eugene pulsing close by. Then she opened her eyes and looked.

Like the crack in the porcelain sink, the opening appeared as an ordinary fissure—a silvery jagged line against the rough concrete. This one was vertical, and almost three feet long. Quinn put her hand toward it, feeling that familiar resistance.

Quinn rose up onto her knees and ran both hands together down the length of the crack. She did it a second time, spreading her fingers like butterfly wings so that the fissure would be big enough to stick her head into.

She tested the ironing board then, pressing on it to determine if it would be able to hold her weight. It seemed that it would, but she pushed a chair beneath it, just in case. Then she climbed from the chair to the ironing board, and faced the fissure on all fours. She picked up her right hand and ran it down the length of the crack, feeling solid air press against her palm. She watched as the opening widened slightly. She tried it again, pushing her hand right into the wall, and the concrete disappeared, as if dissolved by the mass of air.

Quinn looked into the opening, her heart pounding. Though she could see nothing but blackness, she sensed Eugene’s presence close by. She felt movement—a bustling kind of energy, as if Eugene were getting dressed and ready to go someplace. Quinn looked deep into the middle of the darkness and saw a small bit of light. It was nothing more than a pinprick, but her thumping heart began to race. Something was there.

The experience in the hospital bathroom wasn’t the first time she had touched the other side. It had happened once, almost by accident, when she was a child. Years before that, though, she knew it existed. She always knew. It was just something she sensed. It hadn’t frightened her until she asked her mother about it, when she was no more than four.

“Where is the other Quinn, Mommy?”

“What other Quinn?” her mother had said.

“The one who died.”

Her mother got quiet for a very long time and Quinn thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally she said, “I don’t know.” Her voice sounded soft.