The Girl Next Door (11 page)

The internalist was brisk, efficient, and not at all fun. Eve had detailed the symptoms of the cough in the calm, quasi‐knowledgeable manner she historically used with doctors, since her greatest dread was always appearing to be hysterical or hypochondriacal. The ‘doctor’, in green pyjamas, listened for a moment, in what seemed to be amused silence, before she revealed herself to be the nurse, and told her to please put on the green gown and that Dr Cohen would be along shortly to ‘work her up’. Work her over, more like. Appalled by the whole gown thing – she’d worn one once, when she’d had her appendix out as a child, and hadn’t been quite so anxious about having her arse hanging out in the breeze (why would she have been? In those days it didn’t hang…) – but ultimately, obedient, she’d changed quickly, and sat anxiously on the edge of the bed, waiting to be ‘worked up’ and promising herself she’d work Ed up himself that night, for getting her into this, and not in a good way.

Dr Cohen was no more receptive than her nurse had been to Eve’s self‐diagnosis, bristling and pointing out that this was her job, not Eve’s. She was dressed more smartly than Eve might have dressed for tea with the Queen, with a silk skirt and high heels. Enormous black pearl earrings. Before the doctor could simply listen to Eve’s chest and determine whether antibiotics were required, it appeared that she needed to weigh and measure her (‘you could stand to lose 10lbs, did you know?’), take her blood pressure (‘that’s a little high for your age – what exercise do you get?’), remove five vials of her blood (‘better look at that cholesterol’), and give her hell about having smoked ten years ago for about six months, for not having had a smear last year, or a mammogram ever (at this last one, her voice was almost tremulous). By the end – oh, and PS: no antibiotics – Eve thought killing outright was probably too good for Ed – not nearly embarrassing and painful enough. Perhaps she’d book him in for an early prostate exam… the insurance undoubtedly covered that.

Armed with about ten different telephone numbers, including, she noticed on the bus, a dermatologist and a cosmetic dentist, along with two handouts on nutrition and exercise, her only diagnosis a severe case of indignation and humiliation, she was finally allowed to leave, vowing that only something very serious would ever bring her back here. She sniggered on the bus, fantasizing about being hit by a car, and the paramedics finding, instead of the spotless underwear one should always sport in case such a catastrophic event unfolded in your day, knickers bearing the words:
DO NOT TAKE TO AMERICAN ER. SHIP HOME TO TAKE CHANCES WITH BELEAGUERED NHS
. The woman next to her, alarmed by the sniggering (and probably by all the medical literature) got up and moved to the next row. That just made the sniggering worse. Laughing to yourself had to be better than just talking to yourself, didn’t it? That she did on her walks around the reservoir, content in the knowledge that everyone else was far too much in tune with their own iPod soundtracks and ‘buy sell’ cell conversations to even notice.

And yet here she was, a few weeks later, sitting in the ob/gyn’s office. Cath told her she should do it. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to know everything was okay with you? Go. Let them check you out. Better safe than sorry.’ And then she’d told her some horrible story about a mum at school who’d missed three cervical smears and been diagnosed too late to do anything about it, and was dead before the nativity play, which Eve suspected came in part from Cath’s imagination and in part from the pages of
Good Housekeeping
, rather than from the actual school gates, but which nonetheless had the desired effect.

*

Cath’s visit last month, gory cancer stories aside, had been brilliant. Cath was utterly demob happy, having unloaded George and Polly on to Geoff’s mum for a few days. ‘She is so much better than Geoff,’ she had laughed. ‘With Geoff I have to leave about a thousand notes. A Post‐it on every surface. Which side of the dispenser fabric softener goes into, who likes what on their toast, who has to be where, when. He’s hopeless. Actually, he isn’t hopeless – he’s perfectly capable, bless him. He just refuses to absorb that sort of information. He takes a certain pride in his uselessness, domestically, you know? Anyway, with his mum, you just dump ’em and run. I know they’re going to eat far too many sweets, and get away with blue murder, but I also know they’re going to have so much fun they won’t miss me, and that she won’t ruin all their clothes in the wash.’

They’d had an absolute ball all week. They’d done all the touristy things, Cath wearing a green foam Statue of Liberty headband for far too long. They’d cried and held hands in the harrowing and poignant museum at Ground Zero. They’d stumbled on the cobbles in the Meatpacking District, trying and failing to get a table at Pastis, after margaritas at the Gansevoort. Eve had spent more time in Century 21, the bargain store downtown, wrestling other women for cheap 7 For All Mankind jeans, in one day than she thought a person should ever have to. And Macy’s, and Bloomingdale’s. And FAO Schwarz, where Cath made her dance barefoot on the giant piano, despite the crowd of glaring parents whose children had to wait while they did it. Cath could shop for England, and she clearly was, blaming the brilliant exchange rate for the ever‐increasing pile of shopping bags in the corner of the guest room. In between retail attacks, they laughed and gossiped, and ate, and talked – talked long into the night. Eve felt like she hadn’t really, really talked since she got here, and it felt good.

Cath was very no‐nonsense about Eve’s loneliness, to which she confessed one evening in a Mexican restaurant. Ed wouldn’t eat Mexican. Ed had stayed out of the way altogether, actually, leaving her and Cath to it all week. Eve had the slightly uncomfortable feeling that he was relieved her sister was here, taking the heat off him, and glad of the opportunity to work late. She didn’t want to pretend with Cath – she never had before. She admitted to how tough she was finding it.

‘That’ll pass. What did you expect? Everything to work perfectly from day one? You need to pull yourself together, and make stuff happen for yourself. No one is going to come knocking on the door of 7A, asking if Eve can come out to play. We’re not eight years old. You’ve got a lot to offer, Eve. It’s not like you to be wimpy like this.’

‘I know. I think it’s just that it’s all so different. They’re different – Americans.’

‘So just be you. You’ll be a novelty. Be the quirky Englishwoman. They love that stuff.’ Cath went cross‐eyed and buck‐toothed.

Eve laughed. ‘You make it sound so easy.’

‘It will be. You’ve always had loads of friends, right? So why would this place be any different? Pull your finger out, girlie. Plan some trips. For Christ’s sake, you’re in the most exciting city in the world and the whole bloody country on your doorstep. With your hunky husband. And some dosh, for a change. No sprogs yet, cramping your style. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for not having the time of your life. Do you hear me?’

‘I hear you. Consider me reprimanded.’

‘Quite right. And if you don’t, you can fly home and move in with Geoff and the kids, and clean Weetabix off sisal matting, and I’ll fly over here and have the time of your life for you, you ungrateful cow.’

Cath sounded just like Mum when she talked like that. Looked like her, too. Eve had been missing her mum more since she got here, which was weird. She’d been dead for such a long time. She’d missed so much – college graduation, Eve’s wedding. Eve had been only ten when she’d died, and she knew it had been harder for Cath at fourteen. Kept being harder for Cath, too. Their dad had struggled to cope, trying to deal with his own grief, and he’d leant on her, too hard. She’d grown up too fast.

She was just like her, though. Irreverent and funny and energetic. Mum would have loved New York. And Eve would have loved having her here. Missing someone who had been dead more, much more, than half of your life was a strangely unsatisfying sensation. Half the time you didn’t even really know what you were missing, and wondered if it was just the idea of something that you didn’t actually remember.

Thank God for Cath. Then, and now. Dad had never been much better than hopeless after Mum died, though he loved them both. And then he’d remarried, and neither she nor Cath could really stick Dawn. Not in a damaged, lost and lonely kid way – they’d been twenty‐three and twenty‐seven when it happened. In a woman to woman ‘you’re not my cup of tea’ kind of way. So thank God for Cath.

Friends weren’t family. She felt a bit resentful about their friends, although she knew it wasn’t fair. They were all still there, still meeting down the pub and having dinner parties. She felt excluded, although she was aware that was ridiculous. She’d be there, too, if she wasn’t here. She knew she couldn’t expect them to be on the phone every day, or sending emails. She knew that wasn’t fair. But she hadn’t expected to feel so quickly forgotten. A few were planning trips, but it seemed like it was more to do with the shopping than with her. She didn’t want to tell them she was low. It felt like failure. With Cath, she didn’t care.

Eve wasn’t sure that visiting the ob/gyn would have been the first thing on Cath’s list, had she in fact been living her life for her, but it was a start. The waiting room was like a Miriam Stoppard illustrated book made flesh. Women with bumps of every size lined the room – from the ‘could just have been a big lunch’ variety to the type of protuberance that looked impossible from an engineering point of view. All clearly visible behind clinging Lycra. Not a Laura Ashley smock or a forgiving maxi dress in sight. These women didn’t seem to mind if their belly buttons protruded like huge third nipples. Nor did they have, apparently, baby weight elsewhere. Cath – the only pregnant woman Eve had ever seen naked, who even described herself as human contraception, before and after delivery – had been vast in pregnancy, with jelly‐like flesh settling indiscriminately on her hips, her bum, the backs of her knees. Not here. These women were walking ads for procreation. Glossy hair (hello, New York, how do you
do
that?), great nails, clear skin. And Lycra maternity wear. Not one swollen ankle that a Jimmy Choo sandal would struggle to contain.

Eve didn’t know any of these women individually, but she knew them as a clan, a tribe. She knew where they’d be in a few months. She’d seen them. Actually, she’d almost been stalking them. They’d be pushing brightly coloured Bugaboos down Madison Avenue, grabbing lattes at Dean & Deluca and shopping for size 4 dresses again in the boutiques. They’d be working out in Central Park with personal trainers. She’d watched a group of four or five the other day. They’d all had newborns in three‐wheeled, all‐terrain buggies. They’d been jogging, breezes blowing in the faces of their babies. And using the handles as ballet barres for squats and bends. And then, at the top of the flight of steps that led down to the Bethesda Fountain, at the Boat Lake, they’d abandoned the strollers at the top, and run up and down, up and down, up and down, while their trainer shouted encouragement and sang to the babies, doing star jumps the whole time. They’d be walking down Cedar Hill with their sling‐wearing husbands looking at them like they were Joan of Arc. She knew them. She knew how great their lives were, how lucky they were.

This doctor, thank God, was different from the last one. Much softer – both physically and in demeanour. She was older than the polished, kitten‐heeled Dr Cohen – Eve guessed in her mid fifties – and almost chubby, a state of being Eve realized since she had arrived in this city she had come to associate with a gentler, more relaxed persona. She was becoming a reverse fatist.

‘What brings you here, Eve?’

‘Well, when I first made the appointment, I wanted a – what do you guys call them… ?’

‘A pap?’

‘Yes, a smear. Pap. And the internalist I saw said I needed a mammogram, so I need a referral…’

‘And now… ?’ The doctor raised her glasses on to her head, and peered at Eve inquisitively, a small smile playing around her lips.

‘And now…’ this was the first time Eve had said this out loud, ‘now I think I’d like to get pregnant.’ She realized she was beaming, and the doctor beamed back.

That had made her sound like a flake, she realized. Like the idea had just come to her as she’d sat in the room – like the oestrogen was contagious, and pregnancy an epidemic. It wasn’t like that. Babies had always been in the plan. This was maybe a little bit sooner than she’d thought it would happen, but not that much. And she wasn’t working, was she? No time issues. No money issues, at last. No reason not to get started.

She wanted four. Two boys, two girls. Big tall boys who looked like Ed, and who grew to be taller than her before they were teenagers. Who’d play football and cricket and break their arms and have stitches and wrestle on the rug. Pretty little girls she could cook with, and watch
Steel Magnolias
and
Sleepless in Seattle
with, take shopping. Who’d come to her and confess their crushes and ask her advice. Ed said he didn’t mind how many, so long as it was more than one. He’d been one, and he didn’t want that for his own child. He wanted a family, he said, not a project.

It was no surprise that family mattered so much to both of them, albeit for such different reasons. Eve wanted to recreate exactly what she’d known as a young child, before her mum had died. Ed wanted to make changes to the childhood he remembered. Eve believed she’d been shown a masterclass in how to raise a family – Ed knew he wanted to do almost everything differently.

Babies had reared their downy, soft heads in their lives together sooner than they might have done. Cath had had her first baby within months of Ed and Eve getting together. Eve was obsessed with the baby, and deeply in love at first sight. She’d left work in the middle of the day as soon as Cath had rung and said the baby had been born, and spent as much time with her as work, life and a new relationship allowed. Eve had a clear, blissful memory of watching Ed taking Polly in his arms, gingerly, a tiny armful all in white, a scrunched‐up face barely visible between receiving blanket and hat, and feeling her heart contract at the sight. Ed stared down at Polly, utterly absorbed. It had instantly elevated him from current love interest to something else. And did men actually realize what an aphrodisiac it was? Above his busy head, Cath had smirked and raised her eyebrows at Eve, nodding her approval.