On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) (15 page)

Twenty-Fiv
e

A few days after Cyril Banks’ breakdown, Hester did tell Al about her miscarriage, and instead of freaking out like she thought he would, he seemed to view it as though Mother Nature had thrown down the gauntlet. Undaunted, Al turned into a determined rabbit, ready and raring to go every night. And this time when Hester got pregnant, she’d quit work, stay home, and take it easy. They would have a baby and to hell with Sourland High and the money.

For a long time, Al maintained his warrior resolve. But after almost six months, he did grow weary and started getting on Hester about seeing a specialist. Hester, understandably, secretly abhorred all male gynecologists. Look what that quack had done to her when she was only seventeen! Why would any man in his right mind want to make their living by sticking their hands inside a woman’s body? They all had to perverts, spending every day, all day, with their faces between pairs of strange female legs. The thought of letting anyone of them give her an internal exam sickened her.

But she couldn’t tell Al. He’d be devastated if he knew she’d had an abortion. He wouldn’t expect that from her. He didn’t always show it, but lately he had put her on some kind of pedestal. And he might conclude what Hester feared he would for a while now, she couldn’t carry a baby to term because of the damn abortion.

She tried like hell to get out of going, but Al wouldn’t budge on it, so she tried to find a woman gyno, which was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. She’d have to go to Philly or New York to see one.

“Get over it,” Al told her. “What’s the big deal? They’re all doctors, aren’t they?”

When she had no further recourse, she made an appointment to appease Al. Then as if it wasn’t bad enough that she had to go at all, he insisted on going with her. The more she begged him not to, the more adamant he became. “No way are you going alone. You need moral support, don’t you? And that’s what good husbands are for.”

It only took Dr. Harris at Mercer Hospital’s Fertility Clinic about two seconds to determine Hester had an abortion.

“So, I see you took the easy way out at one point,” he quietly and slowly said as he raised his head and shot Hester a vile glance. Then he lowered his head and began sticking things up inside of her. The nurse, who looked like a young Joan Rivers, clucked her tongue judgmentally against the roof of her mouth, looked around the room, studied her nails, and never once looked down where Dr. Harris was doing whatever. What kind of insurance was she? Harris could’ve been fouling Hester up even more for all Hester knew. 

When the doctor finally surfaced from between Hester’s legs, he curtly told her she could get dressed. They’d discuss his findings in his office. The nurse handed Hester a half-crumpled tissue, told her to clean herself up, and followed the man out.

When Hester opened his office door, Dr. Harris was sitting across from Al. Al was leaning forward in his seat, sketching something with the tip of his index finger on the black surface of the steel desk. The doctor was nodding in agreement. They looked like two generals planning their next attack. Hester felt like their target.

“Come in, Mrs. Murphy. I thought it would be easier for you to have Al here so you wouldn’t have to repeat things to him later and maybe get things wrong.” He sounded like he was talking to a child, and Hester noticed the doctor was already calling Al by his first name. He nodded knowingly to Al. If he nodded one more time, Hester was afraid she’d grab his head by his fat ears and shake him silly.

Panic was beginning to grip Hester. She’d left Al in the waiting room. She expected her conversation with the doctor would be private. Now here they were ganging up on her. If Harris said anything about the abortion, she knew Al would fly off the handle. He would kill Hester for not telling him years ago, for embarrassing him, for…everything. Well, not really kill her, but he might leave her. That would be the worse for Hester. She’d rather die.

Hester almost turned to walk out, but that wouldn’t help. It would only create a scene. She tried to control her emotions. The doctor knew about patient-doctor privileges. Wouldn’t he respect her right to privacy? Women had rights now. Al was her husband, not her master. Harris was being courteous inviting Al into his office. She had to trust he would talk only in general terms. She regained enough composure to sit next to Al across the desk from the doctor, and hope for the best.

“Now, Hester, the news is not good. You’re in your thirties, and that alone would work against you in terms of getting pregnant, but the adhesions are the real problem. You have so many, conception is difficult for you and carrying a fetus to term, unfortunately, impossible.” He paused, his eyes riveted on Hester’s face. She took a deep breath. Bad news for sure, but at least he hadn’t mentioned the cause of the adhesions, the big sin.

“Thank you, Dr. Harris, that’s bad—” Hester tried to end the conversation.

But Al interrupted. “What in the hell are adhesions anyway, Doc?”

Hester was dead in the water. The two men started talking about her as though she wasn’t there.

“Plain and simple, Al, adhesions are scar tissue. Your wife should’ve known she’d get them after such a risky procedure.”

“What procedure? She’s never even gone to a gynecologist before.”

Hester held her breath. This was bad, this was the end.

“Maybe not a gynecologist, but she certainly did have something done, and it caused the adhesions in the first place. Up to that point, she was probably a healthy, fertile female who would have had no trouble having a baby, but somebody—and I’m positive whoever it was, wasn’t a doctor—really butchered her insides. So that now the weight of the growing baby is too much for her damaged uterus. Regretfully, there’s nothing we can do now to fix the damage caused by her abortion.”

There it was. The A-word hung in the air, hummed inside Hester’s head, seemed to raise the three of them up toward it, such power it had.

And then the atmosphere in the office deflated. Al turned red in the face. Hester cried. The smug doctor led them to the door, mumbling about an adoption agency he could recommend.

Twenty-Six

One Monday afternoon in January, Hester joined Dee and some people at the marina for their weekly cocktail hour. Flo and Ned Nance were sitting in their folding chairs, holding hands and staring silently out at the water, so Hester sat by Eleanor and Fred Bateman, who were talking about when the next full moon would rise. Jean and Cap Forenti pulled up in their golf cart just as Dee came huffing down the boardwalk yelling, “I swear, I don’t believe it! Some people have such nerve. You know me. Do I ever tell anybody off? Well, do I?”

Ned, a nice-looking man for eighty-three, snapped out of his stupor, put his glass of Chablis on the plastic table next to his chair, and said, “Dee, calm down and tell Uncle Ned what happened. I can’t imagine anyone getting under your thick skin.”

“I do have thick skin, Ned, but there is this person who just moved into the park, and I’m about to give her a piece of my mind,” Dee reached in the cooler, extracted a can of beer, popped it open, and took a drink.

Jean and Cap, martinis in hand, sat on the bench of the picnic table. Cap asked, “What happened, Dee?”

“Do you know Anita Jackson? She just moved into 15 Royal Palm. Well, she’s sitting by the pool in her black tankini, running her fingers through her bleached blonde hair, and she yells across the pool to tell me to stop taking ice from the machine. She says if I want ice to take to the marina, I have to get it from the ice machine in the boating and fishing Quonset. Now come on, I’ve lived here for years, and I always get my ice from the ice machine at the pool. And how did she know where the hell I was going with my ice anyway?”

“I see your point,” said Eleanor as she put her glass of wine down and reached into Dee’s cooler. She took a beer and looked at Dee. “Do you mind? I can’t drink that cheap wine Fred bought.” 

“Absolutely not, help yourself,” said Dee.

Eleanor popped open the beer. “I met that Anita the other day at the hobby club meeting. The president was talking about replacing the old Singers with computerized machines and turning half the room into a display area. So Anita says to me, ‘Why should we do all that if this place is going to be sold?’ And I said, ‘That’s just a stupid rumor. No one would ever vote to sell Pleasant Palms.’ And she says, ‘You’d be surprised what a person would do for a million dollars. That’s what I heard the offer is, one million dollars each!’ So I said, ‘You just moved in last month, Anita. How come you know so much?’ She didn’t answer me and turned to talk to somebody else, and I thought, this lady is going to be nothing but trouble.”

“You’ve got that right, Eleanor. Nothing but trouble.” Through her T-shirt, rings of sweat were visible around Dee’s armpits. “I tell you, folks, when she was yelling across the pool at me in front of everybody, I wanted to stomp over there and yank those sunglasses off her Botoxed face.”

“Dee, darling, your fangs are showing,” Cap said. “You’re usually kinder and gentler than this.”

“You’re right.” Dee sat back in her chair. “Life is too short to spend it being mean. Live and let live. Right?”

“But I still don’t like what she said about a developer buying Pleasant Palms,” said Eleanor. “Do any of you think it’s true?”

“No! It can’t be true,” Hester said.

“No,” they all agreed.

Across the Intracoastal, the orange sun was disappearing from the sky. The group grew quiet and watched in silence as it sank behind the plateau of condominium roofs. The clouds thinned out and turned purple. Fred lit the tiki torches. The scent of night jasmine drifted in on the breeze. Ned tried to tell a joke about a Frenchman and a black man riding on a bus to work. He couldn’t remember the punch line, but his attempt at a French accent made them laugh. Dee seemed to be over Anita for the time being, Fred put his arm around Eleanor, and Jean clinked her glass against Cap’s. Hester looked around at the small circle of friends and concluded that, although they were far from perfect, she was grateful to be with them. She stared up at the stars, smiling as she listened to Flo gently and diplomatically try to help her husband recall the end of the joke.

This is the best I’ve felt in months.
Hester watched the moon rise over the palms.

“Somebody’s coming,” Jean whispered. They all turned to look up the boardwalk, but it was too dark, even with the moonlight, to see much.

“Looks like two people,” Cap observed. 

“I think it’s your hubby, Hester,” said Fred, “I wonder who’s with him.”

Dee stood up to look beyond the flames of the torches as Al stepped into the circle of light with a woman whose firm body looked trim in a black tankini. “Hester, look what I found by the pool.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dee said under her breath.

Hester picked up her empty wine glass and walked past Al and Anita into the darkness. Halfway down the boardwalk, she turned and looked back. Anita was sitting next to Al in the chair Hester had vacated. Her blonde hair glowed in the firelight. Al was staring at the newcomer and laughing.
The devil in his own little ring of hell,
thought Hester,
nothing but trouble
.

Twenty-Seven

That night after the visit to Dr. Harris’s office, all Al said about the end of their pursuit of parenthood was, “You can forget adoption. I’m don’t want any child who is not my own flesh and blood so now because of what you did, I have to suffer too. Serves you right not to ever have a child, Hester Randal.”

The way he said “Randal” instead of “Murphy” shook Hester to the core. He stood at the counter in the kitchen, poured himself a glass of vodka, walked past her, and went upstairs. She knew better than to follow him. She should’ve told him from the start about the abortion, now he was so angry, he might never talk to her again. She deserved whatever punishment he dished out as long as he didn’t divorce her, but the silent treatment would be unbearable.

The next day, Hester taught her morning classes on autopilot. The bell rang for lunch. She hadn’t slept, her stomach was in knots, but food was the last thing she wanted. She left her classroom and went out the back door nearest the sports fields. She needed some fresh air. Al and she slept in separate rooms, and this morning he acted like she was invisible.

Now as she walked away from the school and into the stiff wind, she cursed the day she met Arty Kendall, the day she let him inside her. He could go on free as a lark and have as many kids as he wanted, while she was nothing now but damaged goods.

The late-winter sun was doing little to mitigate the cold. Hester sucked in the frigid air, it made her chest burn. She headed toward the dugout so she could get out of the blustery weather. As she rounded the side of the batting cage, she saw two people huddled on the bench. So this is where these kids come to make out, and now she’d have to bust them, send them to the office, write them up later. She didn’t need this, not today.

They must have seen her coming because the boy stood up. But, it wasn’t a boy. Even from the back Hester knew it was Al. He had on his long camel-hair coat, the collar pulled up around his ears. He took one step back from the bench, and Hester spied the girl for an instant. It was Jennifer Masterson, one of her seniors. She was staring at Al.

“Al, it’s me.” Hester stopped short of stepping down into the narrow space.

Al didn’t turn around but kept his back to Hester. “I’ve got this, Hester. Just go back to school.”

Hester didn’t move. She could see that Al was fumbling with something, his shoulders moving beneath the soft fabric of his coat. His body blocked Hester’s view of Jennifer. Finally, Al spun around. Hester looked beyond him and saw Jennifer’s red face and swollen lips. Hester caught her eye, but she adverted her gaze and stared down at the dirt.

“Well, as long as you’re still here, Mrs. Murphy, you might as well walk Miss Masterson down to my office.” His voice was steady. “This will be the last time she’ll cut class for a cigarette. Right, young lady?”

“Yes, Mr. Murphy.” Jennifer glanced at the back of Al’s head and smiled serenely. Hester didn’t like the look on the teenager’s face. It was a brazen, self-assured look. If she got caught smoking, she should at least be somewhat contrite. Then Hester realized, with a sinking feeling, she didn’t see, or smell, a single cigarette.

“Al, it is my lunch.” Hester somehow found the nerve to challenge her husband in front of the girl. Something wasn’t right here, but Hester couldn’t imagine Al would ever do anything wrong with a student. Even though it crossed her mind for one microsecond that they might have been kissing, and even though Al was madder at Hester than he’d ever been before, he knew better. He had too much to lose to get caught doing something, anything, inappropriate with a student.

“It’ll only take five minutes, Hester,” Al said. “I’d do it, but I have to check the rest of the fields. We’ve got to cut down on this class cutting.”

As teacher and student walked back into the building, Hester examined Jennifer out of the corner of her eye and asked, “What were you doing out there?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Murphy, I swear.”

“Were you smoking?”

“I hate cigarettes.”

“So why did Mr. Murphy say you were smoking?”

“Ask him.”

That comment rendered Hester speechless. They walked down the hall in silence, but when they were almost to the office, Jennifer whispered, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Murphy. I shouldn’t have done it.”

It? Hester felt like she was careening down a roller-coaster. Her heart caught in her throat. She looked at the girl. There was something in those eyes that said “it” had nothing to do with smoking anything.

“Don’t do
it
again,” Hester whispered back coarsely. She watched Jennifer’s pupils tighten to pinpoints. Hester wanted to run back out to the field and confront Al, but after yesterday, after what he said, after what he called her….

Months later, right before graduation, Jennifer Masterson dropped out of school. Since she didn’t get a good explanation from guidance, Hester went to her house to find out why she wasn’t finishing out the year. Hester, in spite of the incident in the dugout, had grown fond of Jennifer. She was an enthusiastic student and seemed to genuinely enjoy Hester’s teaching, and she was creative. There was no reason she shouldn’t go on to college and beyond. When Hester knocked on the door, an old man answered. Hester was surprised to find out that he was Jennifer’s father. He didn’t have a clue where his daughter was.

“She turned eighteen last week and left. Said she’s old enough to take care of herself, and I said, fine by me, if that’s what you want.” There was no way he was filling out a missing person’s report. His child wasn’t missing, she was stubborn. The girl’s mother? She’d been dead for years. Mr. Masterson told Hester, “Mind your own damn business.” And shut the door in her face.