“I’ll be back in about…” Doug glanced at the clock as he shrugged into his coat. “I don’t know. I’ll just be back when I’m through.”
She bit her tongue. David was heavy in her belly tonight, and his kicking was a real irritation. She felt huge and lumpy, her sleep had been racked with bad dreams about the madwoman on the balcony for the last two nights, and she was in no mood for games. “How’s Eric?” she asked.
“Eric? He’s fine, I guess. Why?”
“Does he spend as little time at home as you do?”
“Don’t start that now. You know I’ve got a lot of work, and the day isn’t long enough.”
“The night isn’t long enough, either, is it?” she asked.
Doug stopped buttoning his coat. He stared at her, and she thought she saw a small flash of fear in his eyes. “No,” he replied. “It’s not.” His fingers finished the job. “You know how much it costs to raise a child and send him to college?”
“A lot.”
“Yes, a lot. Like more than a hundred thousand dollars, and that’s today’s rates. By the time David’s ready for college, God only knows how much it’ll cost. That’s what I think about when I have to go to work at night.”
She thought she might either burst into tears or laughter, she didn’t know which. Her face ached to collapse, but she kept her expression calm by force of will alone. “Will you be home by midnight, then?”
“Midnight? Sure.” He pulled his collar up. “Want me to call if I’m going to be too late?”
“That would be nice.”
“Okay.” Doug leaned over and kissed her cheek, and Laura realized he had dashed his face with English Leather. His lips scraped her flesh, and then they were gone. “See you later,” he said. He got his briefcase and headed for the garage door.
Say something, Laura thought. Stop him in his tracks. Stop him from going out that door, right now. But terror hit her, because she didn’t know what to say and—worst of all—she feared that nothing she could say would stop him from leaving.
“The baby,” she said.
Doug’s steps slowed. He did stop, and he looked back at her from a slice of shadow.
“I think it’s going to be only a few more days,” she told him.
“Yeah.” He smiled nervously. “I guess you’re good and ready, aren’t you?”
“Stay with me?” Laura asked, and she heard her voice quaver.
Doug took a breath. Laura saw him look around at the walls, a pained expression on his face, like a prisoner judging the width and breadth of his confinement. He took a couple of steps toward her, and then he stopped again. “You know, sometimes…this is hard to say.” He paused a few seconds and tried again. “Sometimes I see what we have, and how far we’ve come, and… I feel really strange inside, like…is this it? I mean…is this what it’s all about? And now, with you about to have the baby…it’s like the end of something. Can you understand that?”
She shook her head.
“The end of just us,” he went on. “The end of Doug and Laura. You know what I had a dream about last week?”
“No. Tell me.”
“I dreamed I was an old man. I was sitting in that chair.” He motioned to it with a tilt of his chin. “I had a gut and I was balding and all I wanted to do was sit in front of the television set and sleep. I don’t know where you and David were, but I was alone and everything was behind me, and I…I started crying, because that was a terrible thing to know. I was a rich man, in a fine house, and I was crying because—” He had trouble with this, but he forced it out. “Because the journey’s what it’s all about. Not the being there. It’s the fight to make it, and once you get there…” He trailed off, and shrugged. “I guess I don’t make much sense, do I?”
“Come sit down,” she urged him. “Let’s talk about it, okay?”
Doug started to walk toward her. She knew he wanted to come, because his body seemed to tremble, as if he were trying to break away from some force that pulled at him. He balanced toward her for a few precious seconds, and then he lifted his arm and looked at his Rolex. “I’d better go. Got a heavy client first thing in the morning, and there’s paper-work to clear up.” His voice was stiff again, all business. “We’ll talk tomorrow, all right?”
“Whenever,” Laura said, her throat tight. Doug turned away from her and, briefcase in hand, he walked out of the house.
Laura heard the Mercedes’ engine growl. The garage door went up. Before it ratcheted down again, Laura got to her feet. She winced and put a hand to her lower back, which had been hurting since early morning. Her bones ached as she walked across the den, and she picked up the keys to her BMW from the little silver tray. She went to the closet and got her overcoat and purse. Then she walked out—hobbled was more the correct term—to the garage, slid behind the BMW’s wheel, and started the engine.
She had made up her mind that she was going to follow Doug. If he went to work, fine. They would talk about the future honestly, and decide where to go from here. If he went to the Hillandale Apartments, she was going to call a lawyer in the morning. She pulled out of the garage, turned off the driveway onto Moore’s Mill Road, and drove toward the complex, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
As she merged into the traffic on the expressway, she realized what she was doing as if seeing it from a distance, and its audacity surprised her. She hadn’t known she still had any true toughness left in her. She’d thought all her iron had melted in the blast furnace of murder on that hot night in July. But following Doug—tracking him as if he were a criminal—shamed her, and she began to slow the car to take the next exit ramp off and circle back for home. No, she thought. A stern inner voice, commanding her to keep going. Doug was a criminal. If he had not already slaughtered her heart, he was hacking steadily at it. Savaging their lives together, tearing them asunder, making a mockery of the vows they’d taken. He was a criminal, and he deserved to be tracked like one.
Laura put her foot to the accelerator and sped past the exit.
At the Hillandale Apartments, Laura cruised around the building where C. Jannsen lived, looking for Doug’s car in a parking slot. There wasn’t a Mercedes in sight, only the low-slung, jazzy sports cars of younger people. Laura found an empty space just down from the building, and she pulled into it to wait. He’s not here and he’s not coming, she thought. He left before I did. If he was coming here, he’d be here already. He went to work, just as he said. He really did go to work. Relief rushed through her, so strong she almost put her head against the steering wheel and sobbed.
Lights brushed past the car. Laura looked behind her and to the right as the Mercedes moved by like a shark on the prowl. Her breath snagged on a soft gasp. The Mercedes pulled into a parking space eleven cars away from Laura. She watched as the lights were switched off and a man got out. He began to walk toward C. Jannsen’s building. It was a walk Laura recognized instantly, sort of a half-shamble, half-strut. In Doug’s hand was no longer the briefcase, but a six-pack of beer.
He’d stopped at a package store, she realized, and that was why she’d gotten there first. Rage flared within her; she could taste it in her mouth, a burnt taste like the smell of lighter fluid on charcoals. Her fingers were squeezed around the wheel so hard the veins were standing up in relief on the backs of her hands. Doug was on his way to see his girlfriend, and he was swinging the six-pack like an excited schoolboy. Laura reached for the door’s handle and popped the door open. She wasn’t going to let him get to that apartment thinking he’d pulled another one over on his dimwitted, compliant wife. Hell, no! She was going to fall on him like a sack of concrete on a slug, and when she was through with him, C. Jannsen would need a pooper-scooper to scrape him up.
She stood up, her face flaming with anger.
Her water broke.
The warm fluid flooded between her thighs and down her legs. The shock registered in her mind by the time the fluid reached her knees. What she’d been experiencing as bac
k pain and occasional cramping all day long had been the first stage of labor.
Her baby was about to be born.
She watched Doug turn a corner, and he went out of sight.
Laura stood there for a moment, her panties drenched and the first real contraction beginning to build. The pressure soared into the realm of pain like a powerful hand squeezing a deep bruise, and Laura closed her eyes as the contraction’s pain slowly swelled to its zenith and then began to subside. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Time the contractions, she thought. Look at your watch, stupid! She got back into the BMW and checked her watch by the courtesy light. The next contraction began to build within eight minutes, and its force made her clench her teeth.
She could not stay there much longer. Doug had someone. She was on her own.
She started the engine, backed out of the parking slot, and drove away from her husband and the Hillandale Apartments.
Two contractions later Laura pulled off the expressway and stopped at a gas station to use the phone. She called Dr. Bonnart, reached his answering service, and was told he’d be paged by his beeper. She waited, gripping the telephone as another contraction pulsed through her, sending pain rippling up her back and down her legs. Then Dr. Bonnart came on the line, listened as she told him what was happening, and he said she should get to St. James Hospital as soon as she could. “See you and Doug there,” Dr. Bonnart told her, and he hung up.
The hospital was a large white building in a parklike setting in northeast Atlanta. By the time Laura had done the paperwork in Emergency Admitting and was moved into the LDR room, Dr. Steven Bonnart showed up in a tuxedo. She told him he hadn’t needed to dress for the occasion. Formal dinner party for the hospital’s new director, he explained as he watched the monitor that fed out a display of Laura’s contractions. Wasn’t much of a party anyway, he said, because everybody there wore beepers and the place sounded like a roomful of crickets.
“Where’s Doug?” Dr. Bonnart asked as Laura had known he would.
“Doug’s…not able to be here,” she answered.
Dr. Bonnart stared at her for a few seconds through his round tortoiseshell glasses, and then he gave directions to one of the nurses and he left LDR to get changed and scrubbed.
A Demerol drip was inserted into the back of Laura’s hand with a sharp little stab. She was in a green hospital gown with an elastic belt around her waist that fed wires to the monitor, and she sat up on a table with her weight bent forward. The smell of medicine and disinfectant drifted into her nostrils. The nurses were fast and efficient, and they made chatty small talk with Laura but she had trouble concentrating on what they were saying. Everything was becoming a blur of sound and movement, and she watched the monitor’s screen blip as the contractions built inside her, swelled and cramped, and finally ebbed again until the next one. One of the nurses began talking about a new car she’d just bought. Bright red, she said. Always wanted a bright red car. “Easy breaths,” one of the others told Laura, laying her hand on Laura’s shoulder. “Just like they taught you in class.” Laura’s heart was beating hard, and that showed up in erratic spikes on another monitor. The contractions were like trapped thunder; they shook through her body and foretold a storm. “First child?” the nurse with the red car asked as she looked at Laura’s chart. “My goodness, my goodness.”
Dr. Bonnart reappeared, green-gowned and professional, and he parted Laura’s legs to check her dilation. “You’re working on it,” he told her. “Still have a ways to go yet. Hurting much?”
“Yes. A little.” Did apples hurt when they got cored? “Yes, it’s hurting.”
“Okay.” He gave directions to Red Car about ceecee something, and Laura thought, Time for the big needle, huh? Dr. Bonnart went to a table and came back with a small item that resembled a spring in a ballpoint pen, a wire trailing from it to a high-tech white machine. “A little invasion,” he said with a quick smile, and he reached up into her with his gloved fingers. The spring-looking thing was an internal fetal monitor, she knew that from her class. Dr. Bonnart found the baby’s head, and he slid the device under the flesh. The high-tech machine began to put out a ticker tape of David’s heartbeat and vital signs. Laura felt a scraping at her lower back. The nurse was preparing her for the epidural. At least she wouldn’t have to look at the needle. The force of the contractions was powerful now, like a fist beating at a bruise on her spine. “Breathe easy, breathe easy,” someone urged. “Little sting now,” Dr. Bonnart told her, and she felt the needle go in.
A little sting for him, maybe. The wasps were bigger where she came from. Then it was over and the needle was out, and Laura felt the skin on her lower back prickle. Dr. Bonnart checked the progress of her dilation once more, then he checked the ticker tape and her own signs. In another moment she thought she could taste medicine in her mouth, and she hoped the epidural worked because the contractions were fierce now and she felt sweat on her face. Red Car mopped her brow and gave her a smile. “All that waiting for this,” the nurse said. “Amazing how it happens, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Oh, it’s hurting. Oh God, it really does hurt now! She could feel her body, straining open like a flower.
“When it’s time, it’s time,” the nurse went on. “When a baby wants to come out, he lets you know about it.”
“Tell him that,” Laura managed to say, and the nurses and Dr. Bonnart laughed.
“Hang in there,” Dr. Bonnart told her, and he left the room. Laura had a moment of panic. Where was he going? What if the baby came right this minute? Her heartbeat jumped on the monitor, and one of the nurses held her hand. The pressure built within her to what seemed like a point of sure explosion. She feared she might rip open like an overripe melon, and she felt tears burn her eyes. But then the pressure faded again, and Laura could hear her own quick, raspy breathing. “Easy, easy,” the nurse advised. “Thursday’s child has far to go.”
“What?”
“Thursday’s child. You know. The old saying. Thursday’s child has far to go.” The nurse glanced up at a clock on the wall. It was almost nine-fifteen. “But he might wait until Friday, and then he’ll be fair of face.”
“Full of grace,” Red Car said.
“No, Friday is fair of face,” the other contended. “Saturday is full of grace.”
This line of argument was not Laura’s primary concern. The contractions continued to build, pound within her like waves on rugged rocks, and ebb again. They were still painful, but not so much so. The epidural had kicked in, thank God, only the ceecee was not strong enough to mask all sensation. The pain was lessened, but the fist-on-bruise pressure was just as bad. At just after nine-thirty, Dr. Bonnart came into the room again and checked everything. “Coming along fine,” he said. “Laura, can you give us a little push now?”
She did. Or tried, at least. Going to split open, she thought. Oh, Jesus! Breathe, breathe! How come everything had been so neat and orderly in class and here it was like a VCR tape running at superfast speed?
“Push again. Little harder this time, okay?”
She tried once more. It was clear to her that this was not going to be as simple as the classes had outlined. She could see Carol’s face in her mind. Too late now, toots, Carol would say.
“Push, Laura. Let’s see the top of his head.”
Another face came into her mind, behind her closed eyelids as she strained and the pressure swelled at her center. Doug’s face, and his voice saying The end of just us. The end of Doug and Laura. She saw the Hillandale Apartments in her mind, and Doug’s car sliding into the parking space. She saw him walking away from her, carrying a six-pack of beer. The end of just us. The end.
“Push, Laura. Push.”
She heard herself make a soft moan. The pressure was too much, it was killing her. David had hold of her guts, and he didn’t want to let go. Still she tried, her body quivering, and she saw Doug walking away on the shadowfield of her mind. Walking away, farther and farther away. A distant p
erson, becoming more of a stranger with every step. Her cry grew louder. Something broke inside her; not David’s grip, but at a deeper level. She gritted her teeth and felt the warm tears streaking down her cheeks, and she knew it was over with Doug.
“There, there,” Red Car said, and mopped her cheeks. “You’re doing just fine, don’t you worry about a thing.”
“All right, take it easy.” Dr. Bonnart patted her shoulder in a fatherly fashion, though he was about three or four years younger than she. “We’ve got the top of his head showing, but we’re not quite ready. Relax now, just relax.”
Laura concentrated on getting her breathing regulated. She stared at the wall as Red Car mopped her face, and the time alternately speeded up and crawled past on the clock, a trick of wishes and nerves. At ten o’clock, Dr. Bonnart asked her to start pushing again. “Harder. Keep going, Laura. Harder,” he instructed her, and she gripped Red Car’s hand so tightly she thought she might snap the woman’s sturdy fingers. “Breathe and push, breathe and push.”
Laura was trying her hardest. The pressure between her legs and in the small of her back was a symphony of excruciation. “There you go, doing fine,” another nurse said, looking over Red Car’s shoulder. Laura trembled, her muscles spasming. Surely she couldn’t do this by herself; surely there was a machine that did this for you. But there was not, and surrounded by monitors and high-tech equipment, Laura was on her own. She breathed and pushed, breathed and pushed as she gripped Red Car’s hand and the sweat was blotted from her cheeks and Dr. Bonnart kept encouraging her to greater effort.
Finally, at almost twenty to eleven, Dr. Bonnart said, “All right, ladies, let’s take Mrs. Clayborne in.”
Laura was helped onto a gurney, with what felt like a fleshy cannonball jammed between her thighs, and she was rolled into another room. This one had green tiles on the walls and a stainless steel table with stirrups, a bank of high-wattage lights aimed down from the ceiling. A nurse covered the table with green cloth, and Laura was positioned on the table on her back, her feet up in the stirrups. Light gleamed off a tray of instruments that might have found a use during the Inquisition, and Laura quickly averted her gaze from them. She was already feeling exhausted, with about as much strength as a wrung-out washrag, but she knew the most strenuous part of the birthing process still lay ahead. Dr. Bonnart sat on a stool at the end of the table, the tray of instruments close at hand. As he examined her and the position of the baby inside her, he actually began to whistle. “I know that song,” one of the nurses said. “I heard it on the radio this afternoon. You hear it and it really gets in your mind, doesn’t it?”