No prosecutor could have drafted a more damning indictment of my indefensible betrayal and her humiliation.
I finally found the courage to ask my gynecologist for the test. Knowing the questions she would ask didn’t prepare me for the shock of hearing her words. What are your risk factors, Alice? How often did you and your husband have unprotected sex?
No judge or jury would have shown me such undeserved mercy.
I would have preferred to say all this in person, but I knew I couldn’t. For too many years, I was willing to close my eyes to everything, ignoring the obvious, not because I thought things would change, but because I wanted them to stay the same. Living without a husband is easy. But every day I miss my best friend.
I’ve read and reread it more times than I can count. I wanted to, meant to, reply. One epistle, carefully crafted in my head over several days in Denver, came close to being committed to posterity. It was apologetic, empathic. I wanted her to know I wished I were different. I’d change if I could. That even if I ever found someone to love, I’d never love anyone more. I should have scribbled it onto paper while I was euphoric and light-headed in the thin air of the Mile-High City. But my best intentions sank in the oppressive humidity of North Carolina. I never set pen to paper.
Nothing has changed. I’m still rejecting her, sending her to the mailbox day after day, expectantly at first, certain I would respond, despondent when, after a few weeks, she realized I wouldn’t. Why doesn’t she curse me as the bastard I am and hate me with a blazing white passion? No, she still finds some excuse to exonerate my bad behavior, excoriating herself for the unpardonable transgression of making a small, kind effort to reach out to me. Drink me, I say, and she drinks and she keeps on shrinking, Tiny Alice in our little Southern Gothic melodrama.
Tonight I’m going to make amends. I pull out my cell phone and dial the number. She answers on the second ring.
“Dunkin’ Donuts!”
Alice sounds happy and giddy, a little tipsy. I ought to try something witty, something half-witted, like “a dozen chocolate glazed to go.” But my mouth is too dry and my voice is cracking. “Happy Birthday” is all I can manage.
“Oh my God!”
Oh my God good or Oh my God bad?
“Oh my God. I’m so glad you called.”
Oh my God good.
I hear the clatter of dishes, chatter, glasses clinking. She’s on the kitchen phone.
“Sounds like quite a bash going on there.”
“Yeah.”
She sounds a little hesitant, nervous, as if her deeply rooted Southern conscience is stricken. How impolite. Caught red-handed. She’s having a party and I’m not invited.
Hold on a minute, she says.
I hear her talking to someone. Just an old girlfriend, she says, calling to wish me a happy birthday. Who? Susie. You remember her. I’ll remind you later. I’ll just be a minute.
I hear a door open and close as she steps outside, into the quiet evening.
“That’s better. I’m so glad you called,” she says again as if she doesn’t know what else to say.
“Hey, I’m sorry I never wrote back.”
“That’s okay. I shouldn’t have written you.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“Sorry. How is Ruth? I heard about the cancer.”
“Not too good.”
“I’ve wanted to call, but I didn’t know if…”
“She’d really like that.”
“I’d like to see her. I miss her.”
“That would be real nice.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’ll tell her you’re gonna call. She’ll look forward to it.”
“I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
I ask after her sisters, her mother. She catches herself before she asks if I want to say hello to them.
“Look, don’t tell them I called.”
“No. I won’t.”
It’s a nice, comfortable feeling to share a secret with her again.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“I mean, I just mean with Ruth and all. It has to be hard on you. That’s all I meant.”
“I know that.”
“So how are you?” she asks.
“I’m okay. Really.”
“I worry about you,” she says.
You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t even think about me. And if you do, it should be to hate me. Don’t let your mind drift across the years, skipping from memory to memory, skimming the surface of our life together. The Turnbull & Asser shirt and the tie from Pink you gave me on my thirtieth birthday. Our first night in our first home. A hot Fourth of July in Rome, drunk on Sambuca, celebrating ten years of marriage, promising each other to return to this same little place to celebrate our twentieth. You holding my head as I vomited in the toilet, devastated by the call telling me my father was dead. Small, insignificant events and the important landmarks of our life, now all equalized by the passage of time, none able to evoke any emotion stronger than nostalgia for the past.
“I worry about you too,” I say.
“Andy, I’m so glad you called.”
“That’s the fourth time you’ve said that.” I laugh. “I’m starting to think you’re trying to convince yourself.”
“Well, I was thinking of calling you anyway. I just…well…Andy, I’m pregnant.”
I barely hear the rest of the conversation. It’s a double celebration-a birthday and engagement party. Her fiancé is so sweet. He has a thirteen-year-old son. He’s so nervous about starting a new family. He’s this. He’s that. She knows I would like him.
I’m only half conscious of her voice. I’m more a detached observer, someone overhearing a conversation in a dream and recognizing a familiar voice responding with the polite niceties. I’m so happy for you. No one deserves to be happier. I know the baby’s going to be beautiful. Have you thought of any names?
“Andy, are you okay?”
“Of course I’m okay.”
I need to let her go, send her back into the kitchen, back to her new life.
“I’m glad I called.”
“It was a great birthday surprise.”
Not as great as the one you’ve given me.
“Andy?”
“Yeah.”
“You know this doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I’ll always love you. In some way.”
In some way. At long last, a level playing field. Now the love going both ways has qualifications, conditions.
She bursts out laughing. At first, I think she is mocking me. No. Someone has come up from behind and grabbed her by the waist. She giggles, says bye-bye, and hangs up the phone. And ninety-some miles to the north, the scene continues without me, the not-so-young lovers, still enchanted by the newness of their attraction, swaying to music that only they can hear, a favorite song, its lyrics known only to them.
Who wrote this ending to my story, the one that started on a night like this, hot and sticky, when I looked up to the constellations and instead saw my neighbor’s son stepping out of his underpants? The night that ended with me in the back of a squad car, too stunned to even cry? The Brothers Grimm have given her a knight in shining armor, a Prince Charming to rescue her, and a house full of people applauding her happily ever after. I’m not sure I like the way this has turned out, not that she doesn’t deserve the happiness a new life and a baby can bring her. I refill my glass and stroll barefoot out into the backyard, uneasy, consumed by a strange, unprecedented fit of jealousy, agitated by the only conclusion to be drawn from the life growing inside her.