On a Night Like This (17 page)

“You know what I hate?” she said. “Boys.”

“All boys?”

“All boys. They’re stupid.”

“True,” Luke said.

“You’re one of them.”

“When boys grow up, some of them get less stupid.”

“Did you?”

“Probably not.”

“You got that right,” Amanda said.

Luke smiled again. He walked fast to keep up with her. She was fit, though he didn’t think she played any sports or got very much exercise. She had her mother’s body, small and lean.
What did her father look like? Did she wonder? When Emily’s baby is born, will it look like me?
Luke wondered.
Or Gray Healy?

Amanda’s red hair was pulled into a ponytail, and it bobbed as she walked. Little-girl-like. But she was no little girl.

“Tell me about boys,” Luke said.

“They hang around you and say dumb things, and they think that’s supposed to make you like them.”

“Have you had a boyfriend?”

“No. Yes.”

They walked quietly for a while, and Luke waited for her to figure it out.

“Don’t tell my mother.”

“I don’t see your mother.”

“Yeah, right.”

Again she was quiet. The woods closed in on them, making Luke feel safe, protected somehow. He liked talking like this, without facing each other. It felt something like therapy. You could say anything.

“Last year I went to a party,” Amanda said. “I don’t usually go to parties, but my lab partner in chemistry talked me into it. There was a guy there who I thought was cool. Not really good-looking. But there was something about him. You know.”

Luke smiled. “I know.”

“Anyway. We talked for a while, and he seemed different from other boys. He talked about real things—like we were figuring out why religion was so bogus, because it told people what to think instead of letting people find out on their own what they thought.”

“Cool,” Luke said. He wanted her to keep talking, and every time she paused, he thought he’d lost her again. But she was talking into the trees ahead of her, and his response or lack of response didn’t seem to matter.

“We drank a beer, maybe two. Then we went up to the roof of the apartment, which was on Russian Hill—we had an amazing view of the lights of the city. I felt—I don’t know—on top of the whole world. Like the stars were below me, and I was watching the universe.”

She must have been remembering, because she didn’t say anything again for a while, and Luke left her alone with her thoughts. They came to an opening in the forest and started across a meadow. The grasses were waist high—taller than Sweetpea, who was somewhere ahead of Amanda. Amanda walked with her arms open wide, skimming the tops of the grasses.

She didn’t speak again till they reentered the dark womb of the forest, until the world closed in on them again.

“Tony told me to take off my clothes so he could look at me. I had never done that before. But I wanted to. It’s crazy. Something about our conversation and the beer and being on top of the stars—it made me feel different, like I wasn’t Amanda but some other girl, a wild girl. So I took off my clothes, piece by piece, while he watched me.”

Luke was scared then, knew that this story would end badly, knew that she was telling him for some reason, and that he could fail her. She hadn’t told her mother, didn’t have a father. He knew this wasn’t something she talked about with any of the kids at school, kids she had dismissed as being awful.

“He told me to lie down on an army blanket we found up there. Or maybe he had put the army blanket up there earlier, knowing that he’d do this.”

Don’t fuck her,
Luke begged silently.
Don’t fuck her. Don’t humiliate her.
He had an odd thought as he waited for her to go on:
Emily will give birth to a girl, and some years from now, my daughter will be up on the roof with Tony.

“I lay on the blanket, on my back, staring up at the stars. There were stars below me, stars above me. I felt dizzy, lost, like I was in some unreal world. I waited for him. He stood above me, looking at me, not saying anything. I said, ‘Tony?’ And he said, ‘Shh.’ I didn’t really want to look at him, so I kept looking at the stars. I was scared. But kind of excited. I mean, I didn’t really want to be a virgin anymore.”

Luke slowed down as she slowed her pace. They were climbing the mountain now, and her breath was heavy. He took a drink of water but didn’t offer her any. He didn’t want to break the trance he felt—it was as if she had forgotten about him behind her and she was telling her story to no one.

“Finally he lay down next to me. He had taken off his clothes and his skin was like silk. I had never felt anything like it. He touched me all over, and he let me touch him, and then he taught me to make love.”

Luke closed his eyes with relief—she deserved this. His own first time had been drunk and sloppy—this seemed almost magical. Good for her.

“Then he got up and left. And when I went downstairs, he was gone. He never talked to me again. At school he pretended he didn’t know me—walked right by as if I were a stranger.”

Luke felt it like a punch in the gut. He had an insane wish to wallop Tony. And he couldn’t imagine what to say to the girl who walked in front of him, her pace even slower now, as if she had lost her energy in telling this story.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said.

She swung around and faced him. “Why?”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

She shrugged. “Lost my virginity. No big deal.”

“It is a big deal, Amanda,” Luke said. “And he’s an asshole.”

She turned again, kept walking.

“Do you want water?” Luke asked.

She shook her head. He followed her in silence.

“Take the left fork ahead,” Luke told her. “That trail will swing around and bring us back to the truck.”

They hiked for a long time without talking, now descending the mountain. When they reached the truck, Amanda climbed into the front seat, not looking at Luke.

Luke got into the driver’s seat. Amanda turned her face away.

“Not all guys are like that,” Luke said before he started the truck.

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“Then drop it.”

Luke started driving. Amanda stared out her window, away from Luke’s gaze. They drove through the mountains and back out to the freeway to head toward the city.

“Do you think I did that to your mother?” Luke finally asked.

Amanda didn’t answer.

Luke entered the waiting room of the clinic, expecting to find Emily alone, waiting for her appointment. But there were dozens of women in the room, some of them hugely pregnant, all of them turning to look at him. He was the only guy in the room—where were the other husbands?

Finally he saw Emily, tucked into an armchair with a magazine on her lap, looking distinctly unhappy to see him.

He walked to her side, crouched by the chair.

“I wanted to surprise you,” he said. “Meet your doctor. Listen to the heartbeat.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I’ll be waiting forever,” she finally offered.

“And I’ll keep you company.”

“You don’t have to,” Emily said.

“I know that.”

“Go home and work. You’ll have plenty of chances to see the doc measure my belly.”

“I want to stay,” Luke insisted.

“It’s a bore.”

“I want to meet your doctor.”

“It might not even be Dr. Lewis. Sometimes it’s someone else in the clinic.”

“Give it up, Emily.”

“I just hate taking your time.”

He looked up, and all the other faces looked away. Was this such private territory that none of the husbands shared the experience? He had had an image in his mind, only seconds before he entered the clinic, of happy couples, hand in hand, being blessed by a beatific doctor who rubbed the wife’s belly and pronounced the baby healthy. Instead, his wife seemed angry, and the other women glared at him, the intruder.

He stood, walked to the magazine rack, picked a copy of
Newsweek
and pulled a chair up next to Emily’s.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” he said quietly.

“I am,” she told him.

He looked at her and saw the effort of a smile.

Luke reached for her hand. “I’m trying,” he said. “To start over.”

“I know.”

“This is a way to do that.”

“Jeez, girl,” a woman in the chair next to Emily called out. “My man showed up here, I’d have a goddamn heart attack.”

A few of the women snickered.

Emily leaned over and kissed Luke.

The woman whistled. “Honey, you can come to my appointment, too, if you want.”

Luke smiled at her and shook his head. “One belly’s enough for me,” he said.

A voice boomed out: “Emily Peck.”

Emily and Luke both jumped to their feet. Luke let Emily head to the door, and he followed her.

The nurse led them down a long hallway and into a small room.

“My husband wants to be here for the appointment,” Emily said.

“Of course,” the nurse said. “Why don’t you take that chair.” She gestured to the stool in the corner, and Luke perched there. “I’ll take some information,” she said, turning to Emily. “Why don’t you sit right here.”

Emily sat on the edge of the examining table. The nurse opened a file and looked at it. “Week fourteen. We’ll wait till the next visit for your triple screen test. It’s a preliminary test to determine the risks of Down’s syndrome and spina bifida—Dr. Lewis will explain those in greater detail.”

She pulled out the equipment to take Emily’s blood pressure.

Luke began calculating. He was sitting behind Emily and couldn’t see her expression, but he saw the slight hitch in her shoulders when the nurse began speaking. Week fourteen.

Emily walked out on Luke during the screening of
The Geography of Love.
November 27. Four months ago. She had told him she was sixteen weeks pregnant. That she must have gotten pregnant the last week before she left. Maybe that’s why she behaved so irrationally. Hormones raging.

Week fourteen. He had already found his cabin in the woods. He had already given up looking for her, waiting for her.

She had called Gray Healy last April, during their ski trip. “I’m coming home.” To Gray Healy, squash king. Father of Emily’s child.

The nurse walked out, handing Emily a robe. She changed into it, her back to Luke, as if she were a modest, shy, virginal bride.

Awaiting her husband.

Who was silent, still calculating. Sixteen weeks since she had walked out of the screening. He had found the note on the refrigerator. Had she known she was going to leave when they drove to the screening or had she come home from the theater, posted the note under the penguin magnet and then dashed off to Gray Healy?

And a house in Noe Valley. Where Mr. Healy met her, spent days with her instead of going to work, calling home to tell his wife: “The meeting’s running late, very late, don’t wait up.”

Emily sat on the examining table without turning around, without saying a word.

They waited for the doctor. Luke kept calculating.

How long until Emily would have told him: “The due date is wrong”? Or would she claim to be two weeks early, something so common no husband would start counting days?

Days when she made love with Gray Healy and stopped using her diaphragm.

The door opened, and a huge man stepped into the room, filling the space.
I thought doctors were thin, fit, healthy,
Luke thought, hating this man.

“Miss Peck.”

“This is my husband, Luke Bellingham.”

The man reached behind Emily with a bear paw, engulfing Luke’s hand in it.

“Proud papa,” the doc said.

Luke didn’t answer.

“So how are we feeling?” the man asked, unbearably jolly, a Santa Claus of a doctor.

“We’re confused,” Luke said, and again he saw Emily’s shoulders stiffen. She didn’t turn around. “About the way you calculate weeks of pregnancy.”

The doctor raised his thick eyebrows, glanced quickly at Emily, who faced forward, away from Luke.

“We just want to get clear on this,” Luke said, his voice too loud in the crowded room. “Emily gets pregnant. Say November twenty-sixth. Or maybe November twenty-fifth, since I was up late working the night before the screening, the night before she left me.”

“Stop,” Emily said.

“Calculations. What are they? Numbers?” Luke asked. “Silly things. And yet, bear with me, Doctor. I need this.”

“Yes,” the good doctor said. He must have known now, what was coming. He sat heavily in a chair. He watched Emily, though she wasn’t talking, and Luke couldn’t seem to stop talking.

“We make love on November twenty-fifth. Hard to remember exactly, but there’s a good chance we made love that night. We made love often in those days before Emily left me.”

“Luke,” she said.

“I’ll get to the point,” he told the doctor. “So, sex. She used a diaphragm but they’re only—what?—ninety-nine percent effective? But those aren’t the numbers I’m concerned with here, Doctor. It’s how you calculate weeks. If the sperm does its deed, is she pregnant immediately? Day one and counting? Or do you give the sperm and egg a couple of weeks to hang out together, get used to each other, before you start counting days, weeks? Tell me, Doctor. How does that work?”

“We count from the day of her last menstrual cycle. Week one of forty weeks.”

“So what you’re saying is that would add a week or two.”

The doctor eyed Emily, who looked straight ahead at the wall, at a poster on the wall.
your developing baby
.
Studying it for answers to his questions? Hoping he’d disappear from sight, and she could get on with the business of developing baby?

“And the good nurse said that my wife is fourteen weeks pregnant. Do you have a calendar, Doctor?”

“No, Mr. Bellingham.”

“Because I’m having trouble with these numbers.”

“Please leave, Luke,” Emily said.

Luke stood up and felt light-headed, ready to faint. He closed his eyes for a moment, gaining his equilibrium.

“I’d like to speak with Emily alone,” the doctor said.