The Seven Year Bitch (19 page)

Duncan was toddling after a butterfly, which always made the money we spent on the country house worth it.

We watched Duncan walk up the steps onto the deck, take a drink of milk from a glass, and wave to us. It didn't seem like something a baby would do. “I'm be-carefulling,” he said. I said the words “be careful” so much, he had turned it into a verb.

“I'm be-carefulling,” Gra repeated, memorizing a new vocabulary word.

F
inally the day for Shasthi's appointment with Dr. Heiffowitz came. As we drove in the cab up the FDR Drive, with Duncan on my lap, she looked out the window at the East River and the red and white–striped smokestacks of Queens, and I looked out at the apartment buildings that overlooked the river, marveling at their balconies and chandeliers.

“How's Rachel?” I asked about the woman I shared her with.

“Oh, I am no longer working there for the longest time.”

“Oh?” I couldn't believe she hadn't bothered to tell me this. I had been thinking about asking her to work full-time, and now there would be no problem with it at all. “Why? What happened?”

“When you increased my hours, I asked if I could do all my cleaning in one day instead of coming there two days and she said no, so I just gave her back her keys and I left.”

“But you've been with them for years and years!” I said, completely shocked by her indifference. I could almost feel the pain Rachel must have felt when she walked out the door.

“Well, that is the job,” she said.

I wanted to ask her if that's how it would be when she left us. If she would ever think of me again, or Duncan. If she would miss seeing his beautiful cheeks and lips and feeling his arms wrapped around her neck. It was almost unimaginable, and yet in a strange way, it might even be a relief if she left and I had to take care of Duncan by myself.

“Look how high that building is,” she said, pointing out her window. “You know when I first came to you, I used to go right into the bathroom and throw up from the elevator ride. I'm so scared of elevators.” I thought of her going straight to the bathroom each time she'd arrived and flushing the toilet twice. “But now I am more used to it.”

The cab drove around the hospital's large circular driveway.

She checked in with Scottie at the front desk and we took seats in the massive waiting room.

Shasthi was resplendent in a long peach skirt strung with sequins, a pale purple peasant blouse, and beaded pointy Moroccan slippers. She always looked rested and sparkling.

I looked at every woman in the waiting room, considering her chances. I hoped each and every one of them was infertile, as if that would somehow improve Shasthi's odds. Two were speaking a foreign language to each other from one of those icy blond countries. The doctor's patients traveled to him from all over the world; there was a block of rooms permanently reserved at the Helmsley.

I felt bad that I had brought Duncan. No one wanted to see a beautiful baby when she was sitting in a place like that. My heart pounded. In just a few minutes I would see Dr. Heiffowitz again.

“Are you nervous?” I asked Shasthi.

“Yes, I am nervous.”

Her name was called and we stood up.

Russell was sure what I was doing was wrong. He had basically forbidden it, as if we were in some kind of
I Love Lucy
episode and it was all up to him.

“I'm sorry, the doctor will only see the patient alone,” Scottie said.

“Right, of course,” I said, laughing at myself.

I remembered our interview, her three questions written on the Post-it in her pocket. I was sure she could take care of herself in there.

“Call me when it's over,” I said.

“Follow me,” Scottie said.

“Izzy . . .”

“Don't be nervous,” I said.

“I want to thank you. Nobody ever talked about this with me before you.”

I watched her walk through the doors to the other side, to the capable brilliant hands and mind of Dr. Heiffowitz.

When Scottie returned I approached her desk. “I'm going to pay for my . . . friend,” I said.

It was $1,100 for the first visit and series of blood work.

“I'm actually going to pay cash,” I said, feeling like Lucille Ball again. If my own Ricky Ricardo found out how much this cost I'd have a lot of splaining to do.

When I got home I was relieved to see a dozen boxes in the hall outside my door. I had finished judging the Informilk contest—pouring over my “yes” folder and reading the essays over and over again until I'd picked my winner—and I hadn't known what to do with myself for the last few days, although I had scrubbed the hell out of my toilet. I was thrilled to get started with this new one.

I put Duncan into the Excersaucer and I dove into the first box. I lifted out the instruction sheet.

The next three essays were from women who also hadn't noticed the decimal point before the five.

I couldn't stop reading them. I stared at each name and U.S. town with curiosity. Each essay told a whole life's story. I was starting to feel like a gigantic map of America with thumbtacks pricking me in a different place with each essay I read. Bloomington, IN, pricked me just above my lip. Eugene, OR, pricked my right wrist. I felt like a maypole with thousands of ribbons reaching out to these women.

I saw their bedrooms in their houses, or trailers, or mansions. I saw their jobs, their commute to work, their diseases. I saw the name tags pinned near their cleavage on their waitress uniforms, their time cards, their mortgages. I saw their personal financial statements. I stood next to them as they fished around in their purse or glove compartment or kitchen cabinet and found their packs of cigarettes, anxious to light up and inhale.

Shasthi was in a doctor's examining room. She was there and I was here and all these women were somewhere out there living each day and trying to get something—a happy marriage, a baby, a tiny, minuscule speck of diamond. In one hundred words or less, I saw the plight of women. In one hundred words or less, I felt the pain of this country. In one hundred words or less, I thought I could find an answer I had been looking for, for a long time.

The phone rang and, thinking it might be Shasthi, I ran to answer it, but it was just Deirdre-Agnes calling about my crib.

Then Shasthi called.

“What did the doctor say?” I said, practically falling off the bed in my excitement to pick up the phone. I was afraid to call her in case Dr. Heiffowitz had given her bad news. The worst there was.

“He said I had fibroids but they are not so big as all that.”

“Okay, that's good,” I said.

“But he said they could be interfering with the sperm getting to the right place.”

“Oh,” I said. She was so uncomfortable saying the word
sperm
it came out pinched like
spoorm
.

“Well that's great news,” I said. “Because you can have them out.” But as soon as I said it I thought surgery like that would be elective and cost ten thousand or two hundred thousand or a million dollars for all I knew.

“But he doesn't think I should have them out as yet.”

“Good,” I said.

“He thinks I should have . . . wait, I wrote it down. Ar-ti-ficial insemination.”

“Did he explain to you what that was?” I asked, feeling my heart thumping.

“Yes, I think so. But Izzy,” she said, whining slightly, “he said it cost eight thousand dollars and then you know there is no guarantee and I might not even become pregnant. So how can I do that?”

I was going to make eight thousand dollars by judging this contest. “I think we're going to find a way,” I said.

When she came in the morning, we sat together on the floor of Duncan's room and folded the tiny clothes he had grown out of into storage boxes I had bought at the Container Store. It was a fortune of clothes and a fortune of boxes. Size 0–3, size 3–6, size 6–12, size 12–18 were all history.

Summer was coming, which meant I'd have to go to the Kidini sample sale and buy Duncan all new things—little shorts and tank tops and water shoes.

We would go up to the country every weekend and wade in the stream or go to the lake in Pine Hill or to the disgusting water hole that smelled of sulfur near Marlon's house. I would show Duncan his first caterpillar and mushroom and sand castle and pinecone.

Thanks to Russell's aunt, we had been accepted to a preschool where Duncan would be starting this September, just a couple of months before his second birthday.