“No. It’s all right.”
“We have to start being honest around here, it seems to me. Stop pretending he was a saint.”
“I don’t. Believe me. He took my wife.”
“There, you see,” Luman said. “Lying to yourself. He didn’t take Chiyojo. You gave her to him, Maddox.” He saw the fierce look in my eyes, and faltered for a moment. But then decided to stay true to his own advice, and tell the truth, as he saw it, however unpalatable. “You could have taken her away, the moment you saw what was happening between them. You could have packed up in the middle of the night, and let him cool down. But you stayed. You saw he had his eyes on her, and you stayed, knowing she wouldn’t be able to say no to him. You gave her to him, Maddox, ’cause you wanted him to love you.” He stared at his feet. “I don’t blame you for it. I probably would have done the same thing in your shoes. But don’t be thinkin’ you can stand back from any of this and pretend you’re just observin’ it all. You’re not. You’re just as deep in this shit as the rest of us.”
“I think you’d better go,” I said quietly.
“I’m going, I’m going. But you think on what I’ve said, and you’ll see it’s true.”
“Don’t come back for a while,” I added. “Because you won’t be welcome.”
“Now, Maddox—”
“Go, will you?” I said. “Don’t make it any worse than it is.”
He gave me a pained expression. He was now obviously regretting what he’d said; he’d undone in a few sentences the trust we’d so recently forged. But he knew better than to try and explain himself further. He took his sad eyes off me, turned, and walked off across the lawn.
What can I tell you about this terrible accusation of his? It seems to me very little. I’ve recounted as honestly as I could the salient points of our exchanges, and I’ll return to the subject later, when I have a better perspective on it all. It probably goes without saying that I wouldn’t have been so distracted by all this, and felt the need to report it as I have, if I didn’t think there was some merit in what he said. But as you can imagine it’s not easy to admit to, however much I may wish to be honest with myself, and with you. If I believe Luman’s interpretation of events, then I am to blame for Chiyojo’s demise; and for my own injuries; and thus also for the years of loneliness and grief I’ve passed, sitting here. That’s hard to accept. I’m not sure I’m even capable of it. But be assured that if I come to some peace with this suspicion, then these pages will be the first to know.
Enough. It’s time to pick up the story of Rachel and Mitchell Geary. There’s sorrow to come, very shortly. I promised early on that I’d give you enough of other people’s despair to make you feel a little happier with your own lot. Well now it’s me who needs the comfort of somebody else’s tears.
XII
i
The Monday following Mitchell’s gift of the apartment, Rachel woke with the worst headache of her life; so bad it made her vision blurred. She took some aspirin, and went back to bed; but even then the pain didn’t pass, so she called Margie, who said she’d be over in a few minutes and take her to Dr. Waxman. By the time she reached Waxman’s office she was shaking with pain: not just a headache now, but crippling spasms in her stomach. Waxman was very concerned.
“I’m going to put you into Mount Sinai right away,” he said. “There’s a Dr. Hendrick there, he’s wonderful; I want him to take a look at you.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Rachel said.
“Let’s hope nothing at all. But I want you to be examined properly.”
Even through the haze of pain Rachel could read the anxiety in his voice.
“I’m not going to lose the baby, am I?” she said.
“We’ll do everything we can—”
“I can’t lose the baby.”
“Your health’s what’s important right now, Rachel,” he said. “There’s nobody better than Gary Hendrick, believe me. You’re in good hands.”
An hour later she was in a private room in Mount Sinai. Hendrick came to examine her, and told her, very calmly, that there were some troubling signs—her blood pressure was high, there was some minor bleeding—and that he would be monitoring her very closely. He had given her some medication for the pain, which was beginning to take effect. She should just rest, he said; there’d be a nurse in the room with her at all times, so if she should need anything all she had to do was ask.
Margie had been calling around looking for Mitchell during this period, and upon Hendrick’s departure came back in to say that he hadn’t yet been located, but his secretary thought he was probably between meetings, and would be calling in very soon.
“You’re going to be just fine, honey,” Margie said. “Waxman likes to be melodramatic once in a while. It makes him feel important.”
Rachel smiled. The painkiller Hendrick had given her had induced a heaviness in her limbs and lids. She resisted the temptation to sleep however: she didn’t trust her body to behave itself in her absence.
“God,” Margie said, “this is a rare occurrence for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Cocktail hour and no cocktail.”
Rachel grinned. “Waxman thinks you should give it up.”
“He should try being married to Garrison sober,” Margie quipped.
Rachel opened her mouth to reply, but as she did so she felt a strange sensation in her throat, as though she swallowed something hard. She put her hand up to touch the place, a squeak of panic escaping her.
“What’s wrong, honey?’ Margie said.
She didn’t hear the last word; her head filled with a rush of sound, like a dam bursting between her ears. From the corner of her eye she saw the nurse rising from her chair, a look of alarm on her face. Then she felt her body convulse with such violence she was almost thrown from the bed. By the time the spasm had passed she was unconscious.
Mitchell arrived at Mount Sinai at a quarter to eight. Rachel had lost the baby fifteen minutes before.
ii
Once Rachel was feeling well enough to sit up and talk—which took eight or nine days—Waxman came to visit, and in his kindly, avuncular manner explained what had happened. It was a rare condition, he said, called eclampsia; its causes were not clearly known, but it frequently proved fatal to both mother and child. She had been lucky. Of course it was a tragedy that she’d lost the child, and he was deeply sorry about that, but he’d been talking to Hendrick, who’d reported that she was getting stronger by the day, and would soon be up and around again. If she wanted any further details about what she’d endured he’d be happy to explain it more fully to her when she was ready. Meanwhile, she had one task and one only: to put this sorry business behind her. So much for the medical explanation. It meant very little; and in truth she didn’t entirely believe it. Whatever the doctors’ reports said, Rachel had her own theory as to what had happened: her body had simply not wanted to produce a Geary. Her secret self had sent a message to her womb and her womb had sent a message to her heart, and between them they’d conspired to be rid of the child. In other words it was her fault that the infant had died before it had had a chance to live. If she’d only been able to love it, her body would have nurtured it better. Her fault; all her fault.
She shared this certainty with no one. When she got out of the hospital after two weeks of convalescence Mitch suggested she see a counselor to talk it all through with.
“Waxman said you’ll grieve for a time,” he said. “It’s like losing somebody, even though you didn’t really know them. You should talk it all out. It’ll be easier to deal with.”
She couldn’t help but notice that as far as Mitch was concerned it was her grief, her baby that had been lost, not his. All of which irrationally supported her thesis. He knew what she’d done; he probably hated her.
She refused to see a counselor however: this was her pain, and she was going to keep it for herself. Maybe it would fill up the emptiness in her where the child had be
en.
She had plenty of visitors. Sherrie came in from Ohio the day after the baby’s death, and was a nearly constant presence at the hospital. Deborah came and went, as did Margie. Even Garrison visited, though he was so plainly uneasy Rachel finally told him he should leave, and he gladly took up the suggestion telling her he’d come back the next day when he had less on his mind. He didn’t, and she was glad.
“Where do you want to stay when we get you out of here?’ Mitchell asked after about ten days. “Do you want to go to the duplex or stay with Margie for a while?”
“You know where I’d really like to go?’ she said.
“Tell me and it’s done.”
“George’s house.”
“Caleb’s Creek?’ He looked thoroughly perplexed that she’d choose such a place. “It’s so far out from the city.”
“That’s what I want,” she replied. “I don’t want to have visitors right now. I want to just . . . hide away for a while. Think about things.”
“Don’t think too hard,” Mitch said. “It’s not going to do any good. The baby’s gone and all the thinking in the world isn’t going to bring him back.”
“It was a boy . . . ?” she said softly. She’d kept herself from asking, though Waxman had told her he’d share any information she felt she needed to know in order to deal with the loss.
“Yes,” Mitchell said, “it was a boy. I thought you knew.”
“We had better names for the boy than the girl,” she said, feeling the tears shaking in her. “You liked Laurence, right?”
“Rachel, don’t do this . . .”
“I liked Mackenzie—”
“Please. God. Rachel.”
“Trouble with Mackenzie . . . everybody would have . . .” and now the tears were too close to be held back “ . . . called him Mac . . .”
She put her hand to her mouth to stop the sob that was coming. But it spilled from her anyway. “He wouldn’t have liked Mac,” she wept, reaching for a tissue to wipe her runny nose.
As she did so she looked up at Mitch. He had half turned from her, but even through the tears she could see that his face was crumpled up, his body wracked with sobs. She felt a sudden rush of love for him.
“Oh my poor honey,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be—”
“No. Honey. No.” She opened her arms to him. “Come here.” He shook his head, still turned from her. “Don’t be ashamed. It’s good to cry.”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t want . . . I don’t want to cry. I want to be strong for us both.”
“Just come here,” she said. “Please.”
Reluctantly, he turned back toward her. His face was red and wet, his mouth turned down, his chin crumpled. “Oh God, oh God, oh God. Why did this have to happen? We didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
He was like a child who’d been punished, and didn’t know why. Weeping as much for the injustice of his suffering as the suffering itself.
“Let me hold you,” she said. “I need to hold you.”
He went to her, and she put his arms around him. He smelled stale; his sweat had gone sour on a day-old shirt. Even his cologne had turned bitter.
“Why?” he asked her through his grief. “Why? Why?”
“I don’t know why,” she said. Her own sense of culpability seemed at that moment horribly self-indulgent. He’d been hurting quietly all along; she’d just chosen not to see it. But now, though she was looking at him through her own tears, she saw him more clearly than she’d seen him in weeks: the flecks of gray at his temples, the shadows around his eyes, the fever blister on his lip.
“Poor husband . . .” she murmured, and kissed his hair.
He put his face against her breast, and the sobbing went on, both of them crying, rocking one another.
Things got better after that. She wasn’t alone with her pain after all. He felt it just as strongly in his way, and that was a comfort to her. It wasn’t the last time they cried together—many times somebody would say something that would catch one of them amiss, and the other’s eyes would fill with sympathetic tears. But there wasn’t total darkness around her now; she could see the possibility that in a while her need to mourn would fade, and she’d be able to get on with her life.
There would be no further pregnancies; Dr. Waxman made that absolutely clear, if by some unlucky accident she were to become pregnant again they would need to terminate the pregnancy as quickly as possible so as to prevent any unnecessary stress upon her body.
“Am I frail?” she asked him when he told her this. “I don’t feel frail.”
“You’re vulnerable, put it that way,” Waxman replied. “In every other way but this, you can live a perfectly normal life. But as far as kids are concerned . . .” He shrugged. “Of course you can adopt.”
“I don’t know if the Gearys would approve.”
He raised his eyebrow. “Perhaps you’re being a little oversensitive,” he said. “Which is perfectly understandable right now, by the way. But I think if you were to ask Mitch or his mother or even the old man you’d be surprised how open they’d be to the idea of adoption. Anyway that’s all for the future. What matters right now is that you take care of yourself. Mitch says you’re going up to his father’s house for a while.”
“I’m hoping.”
“That’s a beautiful part of the state. I’ve been thinking of retiring up there. My wife didn’t care for it, but now she’s dead . . .”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you lose her recently?”
Waxman’s easy smile had faded from his face. “Last Thanksgiving,” he said. “She had cancer.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He sighed; such a sad sigh. “I don’t suppose you want to hear platitudes from your old fart of a doctor, but if I may just say: you only get one life, Rachel, and nobody can live it for you. That means you have to take a long, hard look at what you want.” He was taking just such a look at her as he spoke. “One door’s just closed, and that’s a terrible shock. But there’s plenty of others, especially for a woman in your position.” He leaned forward, his leather chair squeaking. “Just do one thing for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t end up like Margie. I’ve watched her for the last God knows how many years, drinking herself into an early grave.” Again, that laden sigh escaped him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ll shut my mouth now.”
“No . . .” Rachel murmured. “It’s good for me to hear this right now.”
“I wasn’t always such a melancholy old bird. But since Faith passed away I see things differently. I knew her for forty-nine years, you see. I met her when she was sixteen. So I saw almost a whole life come and go. That makes you think about things in a different way.”
“Yes . . .”
“I said to one of my colleagues after Faith died that I felt like I’d been shot out into space, and I was looking back at everything that had seemed so permanent and what I saw was this fragile blue rock in all that . . . nothingness.” His gaze had emptied as he spoke; now, when he looked up at Rachel again, she seemed to see right into him; into a loneliness that made her want to run from the room.
“You just be happy,” he said to her softly. “You’re a good person, Rachel. I see that. And you deserve happiness. So do what your instincts tell you, and if the Gearys don’t like it then you just walk away.” The words made her catch her breath. “Of course if you quote me,” he went on, “I’ll deny I ever said it. I’m hoping Cadmus is going to give me a little piece of land when I retire as a thank-you for putting up with his brood over the years.”
“I’ll put in a good word for you,” Rachel told him.
XIII
i
There are occasions when the responsibilities of a storyteller and those of a simple witness contradict one another. For example: had I told you from the outset that the chief catalyst of Mitch and Rachel’s separation was the loss of their child, I would have bled away what litt
le suspense the previous chapters possessed. But I don’t believe I misrepresented the facts. I began this portion of my account by telling you that there was no single calamitous event that began to undo the marriage, and I would still say that was the case. If the child had survived perhaps Rachel would have stayed with Mitchell a while longer, but she would have left him sooner or later. The marriage was in trouble long before the pregnancy; the most the death of the child did was hasten its collapse.
As Rachel had requested Mitchell took her up to the farmhouse in Caleb’s Creek and stayed with her for almost ten days, going down to the city three or four times for meetings but returning in the evening to be with her. Though the Rylanders were there in his absence to attend to all Rachel’s needs, Barbara told Mitch that Rachel had taken over most of her duties. It was true. The general homeliness of the house—its lack of expensive works of art, its modest scale—brought out the domestic side of Rachel’s nature. She usurped the kitchen from Barbara and started to cook, remarking to Mitch one day that she hadn’t so much as boiled a pot of water since they were married. She wasn’t a particularly sophisticated cook, but she knew how to put a hearty meal together. There was a healing simplicity to the rituals of the kitchen: fresh vegetables from the garden, good wine from the cellar, the plates washed and neatly stacked when the meal was over.
After two weeks of this, Mitch asked her how she was doing, and she said: “I’ll be fine on my own, if that’s what you were wondering. Do you want to spend a few nights in the city?”
“I was just thinking about going until the weekend. I’ll come back here on Friday night, and maybe if you’re feeling better we can go home to New York on Sunday.”
“Is somebody going to be using this house?”
“No,” Mitch said. “Nobody uses this place anymore.”
“So why can’t I stay?”