“I saw a light on,” he whispers to me, his breath laced with the bitter smell of beer, which leads me to believe that Connor drove past the house for the sole purpose of seeing if I was awake, leaving his motorcycle in the drive and tiptoeing around the side of the house to see my silhouette through the kitchen window.
How long was he watching me?
He pulls me into him, an awkward hug, and instinctively I draw away. “You okay?” he asks, sensing the way I tense up at his touch, but I shake it off and tell him I’m fine, as good as to be expected anyway. Unable to maintain eye contact, my eyes drop to his shoes.
A pair of classic Dickies, the color of wheat. Heavy-duty work boots with a lug sole. Instantly my mind goes to the muddy footprints beneath the pergola the night of the storm. I think of Connor’s motorcycle helmet, his black leather gloves. A man in a hat and gloves, as Maisie had said. It was Connor, standing in the rain, watching me through the window, and at once I want to know why, though there’s a part of me too put off, too confused to ask. I feel my cheeks redden at the thought, Connor staring through the window, watching me.
“I wanted to see if you were okay,” he says as he leads the way unhesitatingly to the refrigerator, where he pulls on the door’s handle to help himself to one of Nick’s Labatt Blues. Thanks to Connor, they’re dwindling in number. Only four remain, and those will soon be gone, too. And then what will I do? Purchase another case to mislead myself into believing that Nick is still here?
I find a bottle of Chardonnay on the wine rack and pour myself a glass. Felix is no longer nursing, and so there’s no longer a need to abstain. I press the glass to my lips and sip, letting the anesthetic fill my veins, trying hard to forget the events of the day, from the discovery of the black Chevrolet, to meeting Kat, to Nick’s many indiscretions. It’s all too much to handle—my mind bounding back and forth at all the possibilities, confusing me, making me feel crazed—and at seeing tears fill my eyes, Connor asks, “What is it, Clara?” while setting his beer on the countertop and again pulling me into his arms, his hands locked around the small of my back. There’s an awkwardness in the way he latches his hands together behind me, so that for a brief moment I think I couldn’t get away if I wanted to, and I feel instantly suffocated. Smothered. It’s too much. He holds too tightly and for too long, and my first instinct is to blame the alcohol. He’s had too much to drink. His hands stroke the small of my back in a way that’s far too close, far too intimate for me.
Memories return to me then. We’ve done this before, Connor and me.
“He was having an affair,” I say, and this time Connor nods his head and affirms that it’s true.
“I saw them together,” he says as I draw away to look him in the eye. “At the office. I don’t know for certain, but it looked suspect to me.”
“He was going to leave me?” I ask.
Connor shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe,” he says, and my mind leaps instantly to the notion of divorce lawyers and divorce proceedings, alimony, child custody, irreconcilable differences. Nick and I didn’t fight, hardly ever. Our differences were slim, irreconcilable or not. We were never truly at odds, and yet, in the final days and weeks of my pregnancy with Felix, as I pushed a nearly nine-pound baby from my body, were these the thoughts that occupied my husband’s mind? Leaving me so he could be with another woman? The word dissolution flits around in my mind, a marriage dissolving like instant coffee.
He comes for me again, trying to wrap his arms around me, to comfort and console me, but I step away, out of his reach, and his hands come up with nothing but air. “What is it?” he asks, this time meaning my avoidance, and as my eyes move again to his shoes, I say that it’s been a long day. There’s only so much one person can take.
“I just need to be alone,” I tell him, wanting more than anything for Connor to leave. The discomfort is overwhelming, a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something isn’t right. And it’s not just the alcohol this time. It’s something more. The closeness of Connor to me, the presumption of his hands. Knowing it was Connor who watched me through the window, staring, saying nothing. What did he see?
Connor doesn’t take to this well. He shakes his head; he tells me no. “You can’t be alone now, Clara,” he says. “You and me, we’re all we have left. We have to stick together,” he says, reaching out again to clamp my hand, squeezing tightly so that I can’t let go. “We shouldn’t be alone at a time like this,” and as he runs a hand along my hair, he whispers, “You were always too good for him anyway,” and though it’s meant to appease me—comfort me in the wake of Nick’s affair—it strikes me as an odd comment to make. Connor is Nick’s best friend. We don’t say bad things about our best friends, least of all when they’re dead.
The thought that comes to me then is that summer when I was expectant with Maisie, in those early days when only Nick and I knew, too terrified still to share the news and jinx it. It was early in the pregnancy, though the merciless morning sickness had finally relented as I crossed that viaduct between trimesters one and two. I was feeling good for the first time in a long time, no longer bilious and green, and yet consumed with fears that I had yet to share with Nick. I’d become pregnant sooner than expected; Nick and I planned to wait until after our thirtieth birthdays to conceive. And yet here we were, in our early and midtwenties with a baby on the way. To call Maisie a mistake seems cruel, and yet that’s what she was, a miscalculation of dates, a forgotten birth control pill, a romantic night with an expensive bottle of red wine. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be a mother, though I never told this to Nick, who was so excited to be a father he could practically burst with pride.
Instead I told Connor one summer evening at an outdoor gathering at the home of a mutual friend, a garden party where I was the only one who hadn’t been drinking, and Connor stumbled upon me in the kitchen, drinking tap water and trying not to cry. I confessed to him about the pregnancy, that I was terrified to be a mother, that I was consumed with all the things that likely could and would go wrong. Being responsible for another human life was a formidable task. I wasn’t sure I could do it.
But Connor’s words were rational. Nobody knows what they’re doing the first time around, he said. You’re a smart woman, Clara. You’ll figure it out. And then he held me while I cried. He stroked my hair and comforted me. He told me I would be the best mother, that there wasn’t anything in the world I couldn’t do.
Until that moment, our relationship was purely platonic. We were merely friends.
But as Connor held me there in the kitchen with everyone else safely outside beneath a set of string lights, he nearly kissed me. Not quite but almost. His eyes drifted closed, his inhibitions lowered by the excessive alcohol consumption, leaning into me, though I pressed a gentle hand against his chest and whispered, “Connor, please, don’t.” His only reply was to clutch me by the waistline and pull me closer, to attempt to draw his lips to mine. Connor was the kind of man who was used to getting what he wanted. Women didn’t tell him no. He was drunk, I reasoned at the time, and come morning, he wouldn’t remember. But I would.
I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to do this, he breathed deliriously that night as if he didn’t hear my rejection at all, as if he couldn’t feel the palm of my hand against his chest. His eyes stayed closed until a noise jolted them open again, Sarah, the owner of the home, stepping in through the sliding glass door with an armful of wobbly plates balanced on her inner arms, threatening to fall. There was a tower of them, eight plates or more, stacked precariously on top of each other. Connor stepped away from me, moving quickly to Sarah’s side to rescue the plates, though she was so blitzed she didn’t even notice, just as she didn’t notice the near-kiss.
We never spoke of it. It never happened again.
I didn’t think twice about brushing it under the rug. We all do stupid things when we’ve had too much to drink, don’t we? In time, I forgot it happened. I never told Nick, and Connor became like a brother t
o me, the brother I never had.
“You shouldn’t say that,” I tell him now, slipping my hand from his, though he steps forward as I slowly retreat. “He was your best friend,” I condemn, and though Nick has hurt me, a thousand times over he has hurt me, there isn’t a thing for Nick I wouldn’t still do. I avert my eyes from his, looking anywhere so I don’t see the way he stares at me, making me feel uncomfortable. I want to ask him to leave. I stare out the window, at the clock, at Connor’s abandoned gloves. I stare at Harriet sound asleep.
“Nick was many things,” he says. “But he wasn’t my friend,” and at this I turn to ice, wondering just what exactly Connor means by this. Of course he was Nick’s friend.
“Of course he was,” I say, but Connor responds with, “I thought he was, too. Turns out we were both wrong,” and before I can press him on this, before I can demand to know just what he means by these words, his hands fall to my hips, and he pulls me into him with so much impetus I gasp, his lips moving toward mine. The yeasty smell of alcohol on his breath is nauseating; he’s had far too much to drink. His lips press me in a way that is sloppy and shapeless, his lips wet with beer. I push him away, and as I do he breathes into my ear, “I’ve envied Nick many things, but most of all was you,” and it’s then that I know why Connor was standing at my window the other night, watching as I argued on the phone with the life insurance man. Watching as I called Kat. Watching as I comforted Maisie in the heat of the storm.
It’s because of me.
Connor is in love with me.
And at once I feel many things, from guilt to sadness to despair. Have I done something to deserve this? Have I led Connor on in some way? Is this my fault? I see the pleading in his eyes, the unspoken words. Let me be your Nick, he silently begs.
And then suddenly the words are spoken, as Connor says to me, a forced whisper so that I feel the breath of his words against my skin, “Let me take care of you, Clara. You and the kids. I’ll take such good care of you,” and I know he would. That’s the hardest part. I know that in the wake of Nick’s transgressions that Connor would take the very best care of the children and me, but I can’t bear to imagine myself in another man’s arms, in another man’s bed.
There’s so much hope in his eyes, hope and desperation, a toxic combination, it seems—so much to gain, so much to lose.
And I know that when I deny him, I’ll lose Connor, too. My words get lost in my throat. I can’t speak because when I do, I’ll break both of our hearts.
After tonight, Connor and I can no longer be friends.
And then I hear a noise. My saving grace.
It’s a meager noise like the scritch-scratch of a house mouse trying to worm its way into a bag of birdseed. Connor hears it, too, a noise that makes his hands suddenly stop their digressions so that he can pause to hear. His ears perk up; he listens, and it comes again, the scraping sound of paws on the hardwood floors. Harriet, I think, but no, Harriet is here, on the kitchen floor fast asleep. Not paws, then, but feet. Human feet. Tiny human feet, and then a voice, a quiet, unobtrusive voice as if not wanting to interrupt, not wanting be a bother. “Mommy,” says the voice, and I realize then, as I stand there in the kitchen, holding my breath, that it is Maisie. Maisie is here.
She appears in the doorway, hair in shambles, clutching her derelict bear, and says to me, “Mommy, I can’t sleep.” She catches sight of Connor and grins, and though I want to run to her, to gather her in my arms, to thank her for her timing, for saving me from this awkward fate, my voice remains staid.
“Did you try?” I ask, and Maisie nods her head, saying that she did. She tried. I run my hand the length of her hair, staring at her gratefully as her eyes become hopeful and she begs of me, “Mommy, you go to sleep, too?”
I nod my head. There is nothing in the world I would rather do.
With shaking hands I turn to Connor, and I tell him how I really must go, how Maisie needs me, thankful he doesn’t object, though his face falls flat and there’s a great letdown at this. Connor doesn’t want me to leave, to attend to Maisie. He wants me to stay. I appease him by saying, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” knowing I won’t call.
“Of course,” he says, nodding his head and drawing away, and I grip Maisie by the hand—wanting to tuck myself between my children and slip into oblivion, a restless sleep no doubt, if sleep even comes—as we watch him slide his feet back into the muddy work boots and leave the same way out in which he came.
I close the blinds so that no one will watch as we sleep.
NICK
BEFORE
It all goes wrong at the same time.
An official medical malpractice complaint from Melinda Grey arrives, delivered to me by a man who presses it into my hand and tells me I’ve been served. There’s no one around when he does it, and yet I imagine that everyone can see. I imagine that everyone knows, but in truth, only I know. My hands sweat, and my mouth turns to cotton as I take the complaint in my hands and, for whatever reason, thank the man for bringing it to me.
I squirrel myself away on a laptop in my office and get busy on the internet, researching the effects a malpractice suit has on doctors and dentists—financial and otherwise. They’re debilitating, though they don’t surprise me in the least bit because I’m already feeling every one of them. Practitioners who have been sued for malpractice have higher rates of suicide, as in my mind I think of ways to end my life. Dentists already have one of the highest rates of suicide of any profession, thanks to the self-sacrifice required and the extremely competitive nature of the job. I know; I’ve lived it firsthand. The easy access to drugs is also an advantage; sitting behind a locked storage cabinet in my office are all sorts of pharmaceuticals that could end my life if I so chose.
But a malpractice suit makes it even worse. Dental professionals lose happiness in a career they once loved, and depression ensues. Many leave the profession. For the rest, a rift forms between doctors and their patients, a wall of distrust. And then there is the financial impact, the loss of a reputation.
Soon, I think, this will be me. Depressed and suicidal, having lost enjoyment in a career I once loved.
I phone an attorney, and the discovery process begins, though we won’t go to court, the attorney tells me, because juries have been known to award upward of a million dollars for legitimate malpractice suits, whereas out-of-court settlements are usually less. I have malpractice insurance, which covers me up to a million dollars, though it doesn’t cover the cost of attorney fees, the loss of patients while I’m trying to save my reputation and practice. But whether or not to settle will be up to the insurance company to decide. If a jury awards Ms. Grey more than a million, or if the settlement demand exceeds that amount and I’m deemed to be at fault, the difference is mine to pay.
And then there’s the fact that my malpractice insurance rates will soar steadily, sky-high until I can no longer stay afloat. The fifteenth of the month draws near, meaning I owe the landlord rent. I still don’t have it, and I’m running out of time. I need to make quick decisions now, trying to turn an easy profit, and so I place the maximum I can on the Warriors in tonight’s NBA finals, though they’re in a do-or-die situation—down two games to one. I figure it’s fitting because I am, too.
More patients disappear, having caught wind of the referral giveaway across town, I tell myself, trying hard not to take it personally. It’s about the grill, not me. But maybe it is me.
Each day another poor rating appears online, and I try to convince myself that Melinda Grey and Connor are not in cahoots, putting their heads together to think of ways to ruin my life. I call Connor, once, twice, three times a week to try to talk this out, but he doesn’t answer his phone. The office ladies seem upset that the congenial Dr. C is gone. They don’t tell me directly, but I hear them talking about it when they think I’m not in the room. We never talk about the scene they observed in the hallway, me threatening to call the police on Connor if he didn’t leave. But we’re all still
thinking about it, especially me. I hear them talking to clients on the phone. “No, I’m sorry,” they say to a patient who’s called to make an appointment. “Dr. Daubney is no longer with us. But I can schedule an appointment with Dr. Solberg, if you’d like,” and then inevitably the conversation drifts to quiet as the patient decides whether I’m good enough for them to see. Connor was always the more charming of us, the more witty and gregarious. The children loved him; he made dental exams fun. But not me. Sometimes these patients schedule an appointment with me, but other times I hear Nancy or Stacy explaining how they don’t know where Dr. C has gone or if, wherever he is, he’s taking new patients. There’s nothing in his contract that prevents him from usurping patients of mine, not that I could blame him if he tried.
At night, I find it harder and harder to sleep, my rest obstructed by the thoughts that fill my mind, that and Clara’s body pillow that lies between us like a third spouse. I end up spending half of my nights on the living room sofa or the floor. Halcion is my only saving grace, two pills before bedtime, swallowed secretly with a swig of water from the bathroom sink, to help cross that bridge to dreamland. I take the pills from work before I leave, not bothering to make a note on the inventory log. Since I’m the only one dispensing drugs these days, no one will know that it’s missing. It’s a lifesaver for many of my phobic patients, making them oblivious to what happens in the dental chair, and yet fairly alert by the time they go home, though someone else always has to drive them there. They’re never allowed to drive home alone.
The little pills sedate me deeply but only for a short time—creating an amnesiac effect, the hours between eleven and two lost to thin air—so that when I awaken in the middle of the night to Clara’s agonizing cries about another leg cramp, I easily come around to massage the pain away. And then, when the pain passes, I watch as she settles back in for sleep, my fingers tiptoeing down her back, slinking around her swollen midriff and along her inner thigh, in the hopes that she’ll turn to me, drawing my attention away from the thoughts of delinquent payments and professional misconduct that fill my mind. “I’m so tired,” she drones, slipping away from my advance, legs woven around the pillow instead of me. “Another time, Nick,” she purrs into the pillowcase, and like that, she’s asleep, breaths flattening, a restful snore.