It was true that Sonja, by an outsider’s standards, was doing well for herself. George was a good-looking man, even at sixty. He was intelligent and charismatic and impressive. Oddly enough, someone like Laurel might be a better fit for him. Young and pretty, not to mention so clearly up for it. Then again, Sonja had been up for it once too. Before she understood what up for it meant with George.
Sonja had met George at one of these sessions. Back then, her clothes were less expensive but her waist was narrower and the lines on her face were not yet Botoxed. At forty-two she’d considered herself attractive. But twelve years could make a difference. It had been a small workshop, held at a hospital in San Francisco. George had been speaking about depression in the caretakers of the terminally ill, and Sonja had been in the front row. He’d glanced in her direction more often than seemed necessary, enough to make her cheeks hot, and make her unable to look at him. After the presentation he didn’t even try to play it cool—he just bowled up to her and said, “You dropped this.”
“What?” she said.
“My business card,” he said smoothly, tucking it into the palm of her hand. “Call me.”
And then he stole away into the crowd to speak to her superiors.
Sonja had thought it bold that he expected her to call. But she was so hypnotized by him, she put it out of her mind. Women like Sonja didn’t date men like George. They dated men who drove cabs or sold used cars or didn’t work at all. Men who chatted up other women in bars and spent the grocery money on a horse that “just can’t lose.” In comparison, George was a prize. Who cared that he wanted her to call? Perhaps he was a feminist?
“Are you nervous?” Laurel asked George now.
George smiled into his drink because it was a tough one to answer. To not be nervous is to be arrogant. But to admit nerves is to care too deeply about ego. The best response was to simply dodge the question entirely. Or let his wife answer it. And Sonja answered right on cue: “George is more comfortable behind a lectern than he is in his own living room!”
Laurel and George laughed and, ridiculous as it was, Sonja felt pleased that she had got it right. In this world—George’s world—she never really knew. The rules were just different. For one thing, people never said what they meant. They told people their hideous outfit was lovely, and they laughed at things that weren’t funny. And they always pretended things were great, because admitting your life was less than perfect brought shame upon you—even if the shame rightfully belonged to someone else—for having the audacity to actually talk about it. It was the curse, Sonja thought, of the middle class.
In the world Sonja grew up in, people came right out and said things, usually loudly.
“My husband’s a shit.”
“Can’t go the movies. I’m broke.”
“The kids are driving me nuts.”
“Frank was completely wasted last night. Woke up the entire street. I was ready to call the cops on him!”
It always felt peculiar to Sonja, the way everyone pretended. And yet, unwittingly, she had joined them. Now Sonja was the expert in pretending.
A man appeared at George’s shoulder and whispered something. George nodded. “Excuse me, everyone,” he said. “Looks like I’m required to give a speech.”
Everyone laughed and started to drink up their drinks and shuffle toward the double doors. George’s hand grazed Sonja’s bottom and, on instinct, she jerked away. He raised his eyebrows at her—Are you all right?—and she nodded that she was. Pretending, yet again.
“Good luck,” she whispered, and then took her seat in the front row. George strode confidently toward the podium. He was going to dazzle everyone tonight. He was going to dazzle her. He’d be pumped—he always was after a speaking engagement. And that was what terrified her.
10
A “missed miscarriage,” that was what they called it. A missed miscarriage. The phrase swirled in Kate’s mind as she lay on the gurney in Emergency, too numb to talk or move, even to cry. Her baby had died nearly two weeks earlier—they could tell from the size—but her body had held on to it, almost as if her mind had forbidden her cervix to open. But as it turned out, the mind could only do so much. Finally her cervix couldn’t hold on any more and all remaining traces of her baby had flushed out.
The funny thing about being pregnant, Kate thought, was that you were never ever alone. There was no other time in your life like it. Sure, if you had a toddler, you might feel like you were never alone, but there were always little pockets of time. When you went to check the mailbox. When you nipped to the store for milk. When your husband gave the little one a bath. But when you were pregnant, wherever you were your baby was too. Even if you were by yourself, they were with you.
Until they weren’t.
Emergency had been bustling when she’d arrived. Kate hadn’t known the doctor, and for that she was grateful. Some might have felt comforted by a familiar face, but Kate wasn’t one of them. Familiar faces were great for good news, but for bad she’d always found comfort in the unassuming stranger.
Having been through this twice before, Kate knew the drill. And yet, like a fool, she’d allowed herself to hope. There hadn’t been that much blood, the cramps hadn’t been that bad. As the doctor did his thing with the ultrasound she squinted at the screen waiting for a tiny heartbeat to come into view. But of course there was no heartbeat. David, she noticed, didn’t look. Inexplicably, it enraged her. Perhaps it was because it made her feel foolish, looking when it was so painfully obvious nothing would be there?
The doctor said they could stay as long as they wanted. They always said that. Kate herself had said it to patients, though she was always surprised when they did stay. Wouldn’t they rather be home? Now, suddenly, Kate understood. Cancer or miscarriage, as soon as they walked out the door it was the end of a chapter of their life.
“Katie,” David said. Kate rolled to face him, but he had nothing else to say. It might have been the light, but his face seemed an odd gray color. She observed the contours of his face as though they were individual, separate entities rather than part of a whole man.
“What’s wrong with me?” she whispered.
David smile was anguished. He didn’t try to respond. Probably because she knew the answer.
Unexplained infertility.
She’d assumed, at first, that the issue was David’s—a fair assumption, given that when they’d met David was being treated for testicular cancer. With Hilary on his arm, supporting him through treatment, Kate had been taken aback by the way he looked at her during appointments. He had seemed like such a family man—a handsome family man. It was Hilary who explained the situation, one day, while David was having his chemo.
“Oh we’re not together,” she’d said, chortling as though the very idea was preposterous.
David had burst out laughing too. “Us? Good God, no.”
“So you are…”