Happiness Sold Separately

  “No, you need to eat light carbohydrates all day—toast and crackers and cereal. Keep something in your purse, and eat the crackers before you even get out of bed in the morning. Put them on the nightstand before you go to—oh my God!” Kat hoots.

  “The nightstand,” Elinor repeats, reaching wearily for the bread and sliding a piece into the toaster. She should know about crackers! The feeling of inadequacy she always had while trying to conceive returns, a little voice telling her she’s not qualified.

  “Does Ted know?” Kat asks.

  “Nope. Called you first.” The warm toast tastes good. She tries not to eat it too fast.

  “I’m flattered, but you’ve got to call him . . .”

  “I know,” she says through a mouthful of bread. “Toast, then Ted.” She doesn’t have the energy to tell Kat about her plan to deliver the news over a picnic.

  “I have so much stuff you can use!” Kat cheers. Elinor is in the sorority now. She tries to push the fear of miscarriage away.

  Back in the bedroom, Elinor calls to cancel the appointment with the mediation lawyer. They can reschedule later. One thing at a time. Next she calls the fertility clinic.

  “The second line is kind of dotted, is that okay?” she asks the nurse.

  The nurse laughs. “Yes. You’re pregnant.”

  Elinor sits on the edge of her unmade bed. Hearing someone else say this—a professional—makes her cry.

  “Sometimes this happens soon after a patient stops treatments,” the nurse says. “Your system is still a bit juiced up from the drugs. You just lucked out—one of those good eggs finally came down the chute.”

  When the nurse asks for the date of Elinor’s last period, Elinor has to study the calendar. She used to obsess over her cycles. Now that she’s given up, she hasn’t paid attention. The nurse does the math and tells Elinor that she should come in for a blood test tomorrow, so they can measure her hormone levels. They’ll also prescribe progesterone, as a precaution, and more prenatal vitamins. Since she’s already ten days late, Elinor can come in four days from now for a vaginal ultrasound to see if there’s a heartbeat. Then two weeks later, she’ll have a second ultrasound. If everything’s okay, they’ll release her to her regular OB.

  Release. Elinor has felt like she’s been sentenced to the clinic. She wishes she could skip the stark examination rooms and all the tests, and ride the elevator at the hospital straight up to the maternity ward and just wait there.

  “So many hoops,” she says, worry burning up the toast in her stomach. She leans back into the covers on the bed and discovers a maple leaf in the sheets. What the heck? She picks it up. It’s deep red, perfectly formed, and feels leathery between her fingers. She places it on the nightstand, distracted by the nurse’s complicated schedule of appointments. Elinor searches for a piece of paper. The only thing she finds handy is the mediation lawyer’s business card. She copies down her appointments on the back.

  “It’s your wife on the line,” the office receptionist tells Ted as he heads toward the next examination room to check Mrs. Carson’s ingrown nails. He steps into his office to take the call. Other than Larry, he hasn’t told anyone that he and El are separated.

  “Hi,” Elinor says breathlessly when he picks up. “I’ve got news.” She seems to be trying to contain her excitement. “Can you meet me after work at Watson Creek Park at the picnic table by the stream?”

  “What kind of news?” Ted hates surprises.

  Elinor pauses. “Special news. I’ll tell you all about it. We’ll talk. We’ll have a nice picnic. See you then? By the stream?”

  Ted leans into his desk for support. What news could be bigger than let’s get legally separated? Let’s not get separated? He looks at the black-and-white photograph on his desk of Elinor on their wedding day. She peers over her bare shoulder and smiles a huge grin at him, a sweep of blond hair dipping sexily over one eye. They had fun at their wedding. Everyone said they wouldn’t, that they’d be too nervous and stressed. But they danced with their friends until midnight, then moved with the party into the hotel bar.

  “Okay,” Ted agrees.

  As Ted leaves the office later that afternoon, he’s hit with a wall of heat. It’s one of those smoggy fall days when the gritty air is hard to breathe. This is when he dreams about leaving Silicon Valley. Maybe moving up to Calistoga into an old Victorian and starting a small practice. Lately, this fantasy has come to include Gina. Gina doing her yoga in the mornings on wood floors gleaming in the sun. Ted and Toby on a back screened-in porch in the evenings playing Risk by the light of a lantern.

  He climbs into his car and blasts the air conditioner, comforted by the white noise, and heads for the park. Special isn’t an Elinor word. It’s an ambiguity she’d typically shun for being vague and overused. It could refer to anything from a learning-disabled kid to a wedding reception. Wedding reception. Ted smacks the edge of the steering wheel with his palm. That’s it: Elinor’s going to marry her tree surgeon. Special is just spin for softening this news. Ted pounds the steering wheel with his fist. Why the hell didn’t Elinor call him when the tree got sick? It was his house, too. His tree. He knows how to operate a chain saw! Who is this guy to kill his tree and take his wife?

  While he knows it’s irrational and selfish and childish, Ted is jealous of the other men in both Elinor’s and Gina’s lives. Shane, Barry, Tarzan. Whatever the tree asshole’s name is. They should all hike off the edge of a cliff together.

  He pulls into the lot at the reservoir. He and El used to walk here on weekends—back when they would talk for hours, about work and life and the books they were reading and how they wanted to fix up their house. Before all of their conversations focused on their problems, their issues. He finds a shady parking spot, climbs out, and crunches through the leaves down the hill. He stops when he sees El, standing in light filtered through the trees, looking like an impressionist painting in her sundress. Her short hair is pulled up, wisps sticking to the back of her neck. Ted closes his eyes and imagines the moist, sweet apple spot on her skin. He takes a deep breath, his nose and throat burning with pollen.

  “Hi!” he calls out, trying to sound cheerful. Elinor looks up from the picnic table, which is spread with a plastic red-and-white-checked tablecloth, a bottle of wine, a bottle of fizzy water, a box of fried chicken, and a bunch of cartons from the deli, melon slices, cheese, bread, figs.

  “Supper.” She smiles and sits down, dabbing her brow with a paper napkin. “Whew.”

  He gives her a quick hug. “You look pretty. And what’s all this?” Ted points to the table.

  “I just want to talk in a peaceful setting. Wine?” Elinor pours him a glass of Pinot Grigio before he can answer. She sips bubbly water out of a plastic cup, then cuts him a hunk of bread and spreads it with soft cheese.

  Ted chews. When they were dating, Elinor often made picnics like this. Bread and cheeses and meats from the deli. Grapes and wine. Although she hates to cook, she’s always good at pulling things together from the store.

  Elinor sits at the picnic table across from Ted. She seems to be having trouble gathering her words for their talk. Her face is alarmingly red from the heat, and perspiration dots her nose and brow.

  “You okay?” Ted asks.

  “Great.” She stands up, swallows hard, then sits again. “The heat.” She smiles, nibbles at the end of a grape. Then she bolts up, stumbling to unhook her legs from the bench, and lunges down the hill toward the stream. At the base of a tree, she doubles over and vomits.

  “You have heatstroke!” Ted starts toward her, sticks and brambles snapping under his feet.

  Elinor lifts her head and looks up at him. Suddenly she’s pale and waxy looking. “Unh-unh.” She laughs and wipes a tear from her cheek. “I’m pregnant.”

  “You? What?” Ted stops, spits out his bread. “Pregnant?” This is the moment he always wished for and this is just how he hoped it would be—Elinor blurting the news when he least expected it. Preg
nant. His wife is going to have a baby. He’s going to be a father. “Really? I mean . . .” He hears the disbelief in his voice and hopes it doesn’t hurt El’s feelings. But what crazy timing.

  He swallows, feeling as though the clump of dry bread is still in his throat. Wait. What if Elinor’s pregnant with the tree guy’s baby? Maybe it was Ted who was infertile all the while. Low motility. He takes a step toward Elinor.

  “You . . . and the tree surgeon—”

  “Ted! No. You.” She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Us.” Sentences longer than one word seem to require too much energy for her. “Our last night—after you found me sleeping under the tree? The nurse said I’m almost six weeks.”

  Ted feels dizzy. He feels hot and tired and old and happy and confused. He takes El’s hand and gently leads her toward the picnic table. That’s it, then: He and Elinor are getting back together. If she’s going to have a baby, their baby, they have to stay married. His knees wobble as they walk along the uneven ground. He looks out for roots, so Elinor won’t trip. Maybe the Greek guys in those stories were lucky, when you get right down to it: Their difficult decisions were made for them. Free will can be a burden. Just ask all those philosophers.

  “I’ve had a blood test and my HCG is one-fifty-one.” Elinor chatters with nervous energy as they walk. “That’s a good thing. So you know, I’m probably not going to . . .” She trails off.

  Miscarry, Ted thinks. But her nausea and hormone levels are encouraging factors.

  Elinor stops suddenly, looks up at Ted. Her bangs stick in clumps to her forehead. She pulls her hand away from him. “Don’t worry. This doesn’t mean we have to get back together.” She seems to have mistaken his silence for trepidation or disappointment. “I want you to be part of the baby’s life, of course, but I don’t want you to feel pressured to—do anything.” She looks glumly at the ground. “I’m not sure what we should do. Something . . . peaceful.”

  “Sweetheart.” Ted takes her hand back and squeezes it as he nudges her toward the table. “I’m processing.” He means this as a joke—emphasizing one of the marriage counselor’s overused words—but Elinor is still frowning.

  “I’ll move back in,” Ted says. “If you want me to,” he adds quickly. He sits Elinor on the picnic bench, grabs a few paper napkins, and wets them with soda water, dabbing at her forehead.

  Elinor shakes her head. “We have to talk.”

  Ted considers for a moment that he and Elinor could raise the baby without getting back together. It could work. But then he imagines Tarzan the tree man moving into his house and holding his baby.

  “No more talking,” he tells her. “Let’s just decide. I’m coming home. You’re pregnant, I’m coming home.” Ted hands her the bottle of soda water. “Rinse your mouth, but spit it out. The carbonation will make you more nauseated. I’ll get you some flat water.” Ted looks around the park. All he sees are trees closing in on him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Elinor swishes, spits, nods. “On top of the morning sickness, I have to take the progesterone again, which makes it ten times worse.”

  “You didn’t have to do all this. I mean . . .” Ted motions to the picnic. “This is sweet.” He lightly kisses her forehead, the bridge of her nose, and each of her cheeks. “Thanks.”

  Elinor nods halfheartedly. She bends her head toward her knees. Clearly she’s dehydrated, and she’s probably not getting enough protein. Her electrolytes might be out of whack. Ted gathers the picnic items quickly, jamming them into the brown paper bags from the store. He’ll take her back to the house and put her to bed and keep an eye on her. If she can’t keep liquids down, they may need to go to the hospital for IV fluids.

  “Let’s get you home.” Ted likes the feeling of the word home in his mouth. The single syllable pleasingly definitive. The o and the m like the om of meditation. His wife needs him. They are going home.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ted tells Gina. He’s taken her out for dinner as planned, only now he has to break up with her.

  “God, I knew this would happen.” Gina pushes her salad away. She swallows hard and looks around the restaurant at the other couples holding hands across crisp white tablecloths in the glow of candlelight. Jesus, what could be more cruelly ironic than breaking up with someone at a romantic French restaurant? It occurs to Ted now. What an ass. Cowards break up with lovers at restaurants. You can’t show anger or dismay while you’re eating foie gras in public.

  “I made a promise and I broke that promise to you and to Toby. I couldn’t be more sorry.” Ted reaches to pour Gina more wine. She covers the glass with her hand. “You’re a fantastic woman and Toby’s a great kid and I know you are going to find—”

  “Oh, spare me.” Gina flips her hair over her shoulders. Her back straightens with tension and pride. “I couldn’t be more sorry for being so stupid. I knew as soon as Elinor wanted you back you’d run to her. Toby and I were your rent-a-family.”

  “That’s not fair—”

  “Then why . . .” Gina draws in her breath, picks up her purse, composes herself.

  “Just for right now, maybe—” Ted begins. “Elinor and I aren’t really sure what we’re going to do. We just need some time to figure things out.” What on earth is he saying and how does he possibly expect Gina to reply to this?

  Gina looks at him with disbelief. “Excuse me,” she says, slipping on her brown velvet blazer over her skirt and pivoting to leave.

  “I’ll talk to Toby,” Ted calls after her quietly.

  She turns back to face him and presses her index finger firmly into the table. “No, you won’t. That much is certain.”

  14

  “My husband wants to do this with me,” Elinor explains to Noah. She figures it’s not the best form to break up with someone over the telephone, but she and Noah haven’t been seeing each other for long, and her energy is so sparse, she doesn’t want to expend any getting together with him. “We’re going for the ultrasound tomorrow.”

  “I understand.” The disappointment in Noah’s voice surprises Elinor. “You know what your problem is?” He asks this so nicely that she doesn’t feel defensive.

  “Which one?”

  “You expect everything to happen at the right time.”

  “I like to think that used to be my problem.”

  “You want to be with me, but you can’t because the timing isn’t right.”

  “Noah, a baby is a lot more than timing.” And I don’t want to be with you, Elinor thinks. I like you, but we’re not meant for each other. Can’t you see that? She sighs. “You’re really a nice guy.”

  “Nice. That’s a curse. To my wife, nice meant boring. Besides, I don’t feel so nice. I feel like kicking your husband’s ass.”

  “Nice isn’t a curse. It meant a lot to me that you came over when they cut down the oak and then you helped me plant a new tree.”

  “I thought you were cute.”

  “Thank you,” Elinor says.

  “No problem. It’s my job to take care of sick trees.”

  “No, I mean thank you for spending time with me.” Elinor pauses, searching for the right words. “Thank you for making me feel sexy.”

  “Glad I could be of service.” Noah’s tone lightens. “You are sexy.”

  “You’re a good catch, Noah.” Not for Elinor, but for someone else. “Don’t let anything your wife ever said keep you from believing that.”

  Four days after the second pink line, Elinor and Ted get to see the heartbeat. Frankly, Elinor pretends she sees it, lying on her back with her feet in the stirrups, the white paper on the examining table crunching beneath her as she strains to examine the fuzzy image on the TV screen in the darkened room. At first Dr. Weston is quiet, studying the screen with troubled seriousness. Ted doesn’t move. Elinor swallows a bubble of nervous laughter.

  “There. Right there.” The doctor’s face brightens as she points to a teeny fuzz ball within the gray mass. “There’s the heartbeat.?
??

  Elinor closes her eyes, opens them again, hoping to see something pulsate.

  “Wow.” Ted moves closer. You don’t see it, either! Elinor thinks.

  “That little thing makes me want to nap at red lights and barf into the gutter?” Elinor claps her hand over her mouth. Oh, dear. Critical from the start. Like a mother who doesn’t approve of her daughter’s outfit choice on the first day of school. “I mean, gosh. So small.”

  At home, Ted posts the ultrasound photo on the refrigerator. The pie-slice image of Elinor’s womb looks gray and staticky—like bad reception on a black-and-white TV.

  “Hello, there,” Elinor says to their baby, who is a vaguely peanut-shaped white spot barely larger than the other white spots in the image. She sings a song to the tune of “Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-De-Ay”:

  I love you, embryo!

  Please grow some fingers and toes.

  I want to buy you clothes,

  My little embryo!

  Singing wards off her anxiety about everything that could hurt the baby. Chlorine in the pool, prescription face cream, ant spray in the garage, soft cheese, God knows why. The world is full of toxins. How are you supposed to stay informed without becoming paranoid?

  Few foods appeal to Elinor, and Ted goes out of his way to find recipes and prepare dishes she can manage to keep down.

  “Do you know about the origin of fettuccine Alfredo?” he asks, lining up cheese, milk, and butter on the counter.

  Elinor does not. She should be more of a foodie.

  “This Roman chef in the 1900s couldn’t get his wife to eat during her pregnancy. She was growing weaker and he was frustrated that he couldn’t feed her, which was the one thing he was supposed to be able to do. So he cooked up some fresh egg noodles, added melted butter, mixed in Parmesan, cream, a little nutmeg and pepper, and voilà.” Ted switches on a pot of water to boil.

  “That does sound good.” Elinor is touched by Ted’s thoughtfulness. He’s trying so hard. She loves him for this. Who could ask for a better father? She palms her belly. Ever since Ted’s moved back in, he’s been so attentive and kind. So . . . reverent. That’s the word she’s looking for. He has such awe for her and this pregnancy that she feels like more than a wife or mother-to-be. She feels like a national monument or endangered species. Her new status has injected a formality into their relationship. A politeness toward each other that’s unnerving—as though they’re in an arranged marriage. If they bump into each other in the kitchen or bathroom, they jump, then apologize, giving each other quick little kisses.