Beekman was incredibly dark at night. There were no streetlights, and people kept their houses dark. Owen parked his car halfway down the block from Izzy’s and walked to her front door, tripping twice on the uneven sidewalk. Before he had a chance to knock, the door swung open.
“Thank God you’re here,” Izzy said.
“What happened? What’s the matter?”
“Come in.”
Owen went in and looked around. He didn’t see any emergency.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I’m gonna burn the desk.”
“The what?”
“The desk. Christopher’s great-grandfather’s desk. And I need your help.”
“You got me out of bed for this?”
“Yes, I apologize for that, but I need your help.”
“You can’t call me up in the middle of the night and tell me it’s an emergency, Izzy. I have a—”
“A wife and a kid and a home and a life, I know all that. You and your happily married wife named Lucy with her stupid chickens.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Not much. One bottle.”
“A regular bottle or a big bottle?”
“A regular bottle,” said Izzy.
“Izzy…”
“Okay, it was a big bottle! I was upset! Stop judging me!”
Owen knew Izzy well enough by now to understand that she kept her daytime-drinking tally separate from her nighttime drinking. Not that she tallied anything, not really. She just considered the daytime to be a different day than the nighttime. So one big bottle meant, at a minimum, a daytime regular bottle plus a nighttime big bottle. Which explained a few things, Owen thought, as he watched Izzy lurching around her living room. It was the first time he’d seen her lurch.
“I’m not judging you,” said Owen. “I just like to know what I’m dealing with.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Christopher coming by the other day was very upsetting to me. I thought you’d understand. I’m sorry if I was wrong.”
“I do understand,” said Owen. “I just don’t think this is the way to handle it.”
“Well, then, go home to your wife. I’ll do it by myself.”
“If you burn it, it’s done,” said Owen. “Why don’t you just enjoy having something he wants for a while.”
“He’ll just steal it like he tried to do the other day. He’ll come by when I’m not home and take it.”
“Change the locks. I’ll find someone to do it for you. I’ll get it done tomorrow.”
Izzy just stood there.
“You’re going to set your house on fire, Izzy. You are in no condition to handle matches and lighter fluid. Come on upstairs, I’ll put you into bed.”
Izzy stood there and appeared to think about it. She swayed a little to the left and grabbed the back of a tattered wingback chair, steadying herself, although just barely.
“Give me the lighter fluid,” said Owen. “I’ll help you up the stairs.”
“I need you to hold me.”
“I can’t carry you up the stairs, Izzy,” said Owen. “I’ll kill us both.”
“No, I mean tonight. I need you to stay. I don’t ever ask for anything like this, but tonight I need it.”
“I’ll stay with you,” said Owen.
Owen jolted awake deep into the night. He was in Izzy’s bed. He was tangled up in a linen sheet, drenched in a clammy sweat, possessed by a single terrifying thought.
What if Izzy got pregnant?
They were using condoms, yes, but using condoms the way Owen suspected most people did, meaning less than perfectly and not all the time. Owen and Lucy had had such a difficult time conceiving children, they had spent so many thousands of dollars they didn’t have in order to create Wyatt in a petri dish and have him implanted in Lucy’s belly, that there was a small part of Owen that didn’t actually believe that sex caused babies, and that small part occasionally overruled his more rational side when it came time to put on a condom when he was naked with Izzy and she was doing something crazy. He wasn’t proud of it. He had promised Lucy condoms, promised them as part of their agreement, and here he was, in this most primal and fundamental way, failing her. In the way that could cause her the most harm, the most pain, that could put her most in jeopardy.
“I’m not going on the pill,” Izzy said to him when he brought it up the next morning.
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Owen,” she said. “Maybe because I don’t want to put pig hormones into my body?”
“Is that what the pill is made out of?” Owen asked. “That doesn’t sound right, Izzy.”
“They have to get the hormones somewhere, right? And whatever kind of strange hormones they are, I don’t want them in my body.”
“Okay, but what about the other thing. A whatchamacallit. We can put two men on goal.”
“A diaphragm? You want me to get a diaphragm?” The word diaphragm struck Owen like a Ziploc bag full of cold pudding. It felt strange and truly surprising. How is it that I’m talking to this woman who’s not my wife about getting a diaphragm? When did this become my reality?
“I want you to get something, to go to the doctor and get something, yes. If we’re going to keep doing this.”
“I haven’t been to the gynecologist in ages,” said Izzy. “I don’t think I can even get pregnant. Although I’m so bloated these days I look pregnant.” She paused and stared at Owen. “This is where you’re supposed to say I don’t look the least bit pregnant.”
“Don’t change the subject, Izzy. I’m serious about this. I want you to go to the doctor.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. She wiggled her shoulders a bit theatrically. “I’ll make an appointment.”
*
“Tell me something about your life upstate,” said Ben.
Lucy had come to Brooklyn early that day, and they’d already had sex twice, and now they were both lying on their sides, looking at each other’s faces.
“It’s too boring to talk about,” said Lucy.
“Just one thing. Anything.”
“Let me think,” said Lucy. Finally she said, “I have chickens.”
“You have chickens?”
“I do.”
“Explain, please.”
“Last winter I was drinking perhaps a little too much wine in front of the fireplace and I ended up ordering fifteen baby chicks online.”
“Fifteen?”
“That was the smallest amount they’d sell you,” said Lucy. “I went to the wrong website. I went to one meant for chicken farmers, not housewives looking for a new hobby. And then when the box came, there were nineteen in there,” said Lucy. “They give you extra. They call them packing peanuts. And I did not know that at the time.”
“You have nineteen chickens?”
“I started out with nineteen chickens,” said Lucy. “I currently have eleven.”
“You eat your chickens?”
“Nope,” Lucy said. “Just the eggs.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What happened to the missing eight chickens?”
Lucy sucked her teeth and said, “They died while under my care.”
“How did they die?”
“This is not a good conversation to have with anyone who’s never had chickens.”