The Other Life (2 page)

They’d been house hunting for months, and this hundred-year-old colonial on the North Shore had nearly everything they were looking for. When the real estate agent was out of earshot and Lewis whispered that the place felt like home, Quinn paused. He was right, of course, but was it smart to live in a house with an escape hatch? Would she wake up one night after some stupid fight over who parked on which side of the driveway, and be tempted to slip away?

She didn’t think she would. But the very possibility was enough to keep her from telling Lewis about this or any of the portals in her life. Surely he would want assurance that she could never be lured away, and Quinn didn’t know if she could make that promise.

In the beginning of their relationship, she was tempted to tell him about this other life she knew existed but had never dared visit. But she asked herself how she would feel if Lewis had such an escape hatch in
his
life, and it made her shudder in fear. Quinn had spent her entire childhood trying to cope with her mother’s unpredictable disappearances into depression, and had managed to fashion an adult life for herself safe from such worries. She simply couldn’t burden Lewis with such a terrible torment.

Eventually, the secret worked itself so deep into the tapestry of their relationship that it became easier to ignore than to focus on, and Quinn knew it was her lot in life to protect her husband from this dangerous truth forever.

Ultimately, of course, she agreed to live in the house despite the escape hatch. And in the four years since, she never even opened the antique ironing board to get a good look at what she had sensed behind it. Today, though, while Lewis slept, Quinn sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about the news they had gotten from the doctor, and contemplated tiptoeing into the basement and slipping through.

It was the day of her amniocentesis. Lewis had taken time off from work to come with her for the test. In the morning, Isaac sat in front of his cereal bowl, dipping his finger into the milk and using it to paint shapes on the table.

“What are you doing?” Quinn said, pulling a paper towel off the roll.

“Making chickens,” Isaac said. “See?”

Quinn stopped to peer at what her son had created. The milk lines were running together, turning whatever he had painted into an amorphous blob. “Is that a beak?” she asked.

He nodded. “And these are the hands.”

She stifled a laugh. “Your chickens have hands?”

“Where else would they put their wristwatches?” Lewis said as he walked into the room. He kissed Quinn on the mouth. “How do you feel?”

“So far, so good.”

They were talking about her morning sickness. Quinn didn’t like to complain much, but nausea was her own version of hell. And at the beginning of the pregnancy, even the most benign smell could send her to the bathroom, gagging. Now, at thirteen weeks pregnant, she was starting her second trimester and having more good days than bad.

“Sweetie,” she said to her son, “next time you want to draw, get your crayons and paper. The table is for eating.”

“The table is for eating?” Lewis said as he rapped his knuckles on the hard surface. “No wonder he’s missing his front teeth.” He winked at Isaac, who laughed, causing a spoonful of Honey Nut Cheerios to dribble out of his mouth.

“I got it,” Lewis said to Quinn as he grabbed a napkin.

She paused. It was the kind of domestic moment that usually triggered her “go away and let me handle it” response, but today was different. She was edgy and running late. She nodded and went upstairs to get dressed.

Quinn tried on three different shirts, getting crankier with each one. Nothing was loose enough to flatter her expanding frame, and she wasn’t quite ready for maternity clothes. She studied herself in the mirror, trying to be more objective. Her straight, dark hair had the luster of pregnancy, which pleased her. And the navy top was pretty with her fair complexion. But would anyone notice that faint grease stain down the middle?

She thought about the blouse hanging on the dryer rack in the basement, waiting to be ironed. It was clean. It was roomy. It was comfortable. Only problem was that she didn’t want to go down there. Not today, when she was feeling this shaky. Usually she could walk right by that ancient ironing board without much trouble. But on high-anxiety days like this she hated to be reminded that she could so easily slip away.

Quinn was thirty-six, old enough for amniocentesis to be imperative. But she’d also had the procedure seven years before, when she was pregnant with Isaac, because her obstetrician was the cautious type who believed pregnant women should take advantage of every test medical science had available. So she knew exactly what to expect. She would be in a small, darkened room, the image of her baby on a screen tilted so that she could make out certain aspects of the shapes while a radiology technician freeze-framed different views, taking measurements. After that was done, Sally Bernard, her obstetrician, would be called in to perform the amniocentesis. Dr. Bernard would use the screen as a guide so that the long needle used to extract a sample of amniotic fluid would miss puncturing the baby. This was the part that scared Quinn. What if the doctor was distracted? What if she forgot for a moment that the baby was a real and fragile human being, and got careless?

Hormonal madness, Quinn told herself, as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her body had pushed her into maternal overdrive.

Quinn went back to the kitchen, where Lewis was at the table having his breakfast. Isaac sat next to him, drawing—on paper this time—with a blue crayon. It wasn’t until her son started preschool that Quinn understood he had unusual artistic abilities. His teachers always wanted to know where he got it from, and Quinn would explain that her mother had been an artist. What she left out was that she hoped artistic talent was all he had inherited from her. Quinn’s mother suffered from bipolar disorder, and became so depressed after she and Lewis got married that she killed herself by overdosing on prescription medication. As evidenced by the scar on her wrist, it hadn’t been her first suicide attempt—just her best.

Lewis looked up from his newspaper. “Do you want me to pack his lunch?”

“I’ve got it,” she said.

He went back to his reading. “You know your shirt is stained?”

Quinn looked at her top, realizing it was foolish to think a stain right in the middle of her expanding chest could go unnoticed. She went down the basement steps quickly, as she always did, trying to pretend it was the most casual act. Quinn had long ago decided that keeping her secret required behaving as if there were nothing at all peculiar about her circumstances. That way she could live as normal a life as anybody else.

The washer and dryer were in a small, square laundry room Quinn and Lewis had built in the far corner of the basement. The two walls that were part of the foundation were concrete, and the other two were the drywall that had been erected to create the space. Lewis had painted the whole thing a pale peach, leaving the dark wood ironing board untouched. He had offered to oil the hinges so that Quinn could actually use it, but she made some excuse, telling him that it was too close to the corner to be practical, and she preferred to just leave it intact as a historic artifact.

She opened the ordinary, freestanding ironing board and laid her purple blouse over it. As she worked the hot iron over the seams and nosed it around the buttons, her back to the wall, she sensed the opening in the foundation like another presence. It was as if her other life—the one where all her energy was spent trying to keep Eugene from coming unglued—were buzzing by just a few feet away.

She finished ironing the blouse and changed into it, dropping the stained one into the empty washing machine. Quinn put her hand on her swelling tummy, excited to think that in a matter of hours she and Lewis would see their new baby on the sonogram screen, a fuzzy image in shades of gray. A little brother or sister for Isaac. She closed her eyes, picturing a newborn swaddled in soft cotton, and her nipples tingled in anticipation. Funny how trained her body was to react this time around.

 

 

LATER, AS SHE LAY in the small, darkened room in the radiology department of the hospital where her amnio would be done, the technician squirted heated jelly onto her stomach, and Quinn reached for Lewis’s hand.

The radiology technician, a small woman with a Caribbean accent who had introduced herself as Jeanette, ran the transducer over Quinn’s flesh. Immediately, the quick
whoosh-whoosh-whoosh
of the baby’s heartbeat filled the room, and Lewis smiled.

“You don’t want to know the baby’s gender, is that right?” Jeanette asked without taking her eyes from the screen.

Quinn hesitated. She had told her doctor she didn’t want to know, but that was more for Lewis than herself. In fact, she would have found it helpful to know, so that she could get everything ready before the baby was born. But when Lewis told her how excited he was about the idea of being surprised, she capitulated.

It wasn’t out of weakness, but generosity. In fact, she considered the ability to give her greatest asset. It took a certain power of will, she reasoned, to put her own needs last and take care of those she loved.

Her mother, who had often been the recipient of this self-sacrifice, had labeled Quinn “a pleaser.” It was clear to Quinn that this was intended as neither an insult nor a compliment, but the acceptance of an unfortunate flaw, such as astigmatism or lactose intolerance.

Quinn looked at her husband, wondering if he might change his mind about finding out the sex of the baby.

“We want to be surprised,” Lewis said to Jeanette.

“Can you already tell from these images?” Quinn added.

Jeanette smiled. “Mama, you shouldn’t ask what you don’t want to know.”

Right, Quinn thought, and smiled back. She couldn’t believe she had almost let curiosity get the better of her.

Jeanette continued working, pushing the probe around Quinn’s middle, occasionally stopping to press into one section or another.

“Is that the hand?” Lewis asked. “I thought I saw a little hand.”

Jeanette’s expression dropped. “Just a minute,” she said. She continued running the wand over the same section of Quinn’s stomach, staring hard at the screen. She pushed a button to freeze the picture, and Quinn thought she heard a small intake of air. Was it her imagination, or had Jeanette gasped?

“What is it?” Quinn said. “Is something wrong?”

Jeanette moved the transducer and took another picture. She put the equipment down and gave Quinn’s lower arm a squeeze.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

Quinn propped herself up on her elbows. “What the hell was that?” she said to her husband. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

The room was too dark for her to make out her husband’s complexion, but she knew him well enough to sense he had gone ashen.

“I’m about to freak out,” she said.

“Don’t freak out,” he said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“For ‘nothing’ she sure ran out of here fast.”

He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Let’s not worry yet. She’ll be back in a minute.”

“Your hand is cold.”

He rubbed his palms together, creating heat from friction, and then took her hand again. “That better?”

“I have to pee.”

By the time Jeanette came back into the room with a black-haired man in a white coat, Quinn’s armpits were damp, despite the fact that her extremities were now even icier than Lewis’s hand had felt.

“Is everything okay?” Quinn asked. “Where’s Dr. Bernard?”

“She’ll be here soon,” he said. “I’m Dr. Peng.”

“Are you an obstetrician?” Lewis asked.

Dr. Peng sat in front of the monitor. “Radiologist,” he said. Jeanette leaned over him to press something into the keyboard. The doctor stared at the screen and picked up the transducer. Jeanette squirted more warm gel on Quinn’s stomach and Dr. Peng began swirling the probe over it. The technician positioned herself behind the doctor, her hand over her mouth as she watched the screen.

“There,” she said quietly.

“I see,” the doctor said. He pressed the wand harder and harder into Quinn’s stomach. She felt the sweat run from her armpit to her back and swallowed against a hard lump.

What’s wrong?
she asked, but only in her head. She didn’t want to say the words out loud. She couldn’t bear hearing them. At last Lewis said them for her, but the doctor was evasive.

“Let’s wait for Dr. Bernard to arrive,” he said. “We can chat in my office after the amnio.”

“Please,” Lewis said. “Tell us now.”

Quinn knew that bad news was supposed to be delivered across a desk, not in a diagnostic examination room with the patient flat on her back and half-undressed. But the doctor paused, clearly weighing whether the situation warranted a breach of protocol. Quinn held her breath.

Finally, he sighed. “We think there’s a problem,” he began. “It looks like the fetus’s skull hasn’t fused properly. The ultrasound indicates an abnormality in the forehead.” He ran his fingers from the bridge of his nose upward, as if to illustrate the exact location. Then he turned the screen toward Quinn and Lewis, and pulled a laser pointer from his pocket, using it to indicate a hazy spot on the screen. “It’s hard to tell at this stage in development, but part of the brain or the brain’s cover is likely extending beyond the opening, preventing the bone from being able to fuse. We call this an encephalocele.”

Quinn’s fingers and toes went numb. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Think of it as a fissure in her skull,” the doctor said. “We can see something extending beyond it, but it’s difficult to tell whether it’s brain matter or the brain’s cover and cerebrospinal fluid. We’ll have to do more testing, schedule you for a targeted sonogram.”