Another Piece of My Heart (14 page)

There is a silence as Andi thinks. “You’re right,” she says after a while. “I won’t find better. But I will find different.”

Deanna cocks her head. “Different like that friend of Drew’s you were dancing with last night? The one who was flirting with you?”

Andi looks away quickly. That was exactly what she had been thinking. That she would indeed be far happier with someone like Pete. No kids. No ex-wives leaving ranting drunken messages on the answer machine at home. No husband who has to leave in the middle of the night to collect the kids, or drop everything at a moment’s notice because their mother hasn’t shown up. Again.

A man like Pete, who has no baggage. Oh sure, he might have some—who doesn’t?—but not the kind of baggage that is cluttering their lives on a daily basis; not the kind of baggage that brings drama, and turmoil, and poison into their home, into their lives.

“Maybe a man like him. Not him”—Andi feigns nonchalance—“but yes. I wouldn’t be with someone with children again. Not after this. I want someone who has no ties.”

“No one has nothing. Not at this age,” Deanna says. “That guy? Pete? That guy may look like the answer to your problems, but I promise you, he isn’t. You may be lying in bed thinking about Pete, or … a man like Pete … and when you are going through a painful time, another man can be a great distraction, but I promise you, it is not a reason to end a marriage.”

“I
know
!” Andi says. “This isn’t about him. This is about the family dynamic. It’s about Emily.”

“But thinking about another man saves you from problem-solving,” Deanna insists gently, knowing she is right. “It removes you from your life, and places you squarely in fantasyland. If you end this because you think another man, Pete or someone else, is the answer to your prayers, you’re very much mistaken.”

Andi says nothing. There is nothing to say because Deanna is right. She is choosing to shift her focus from what is wrong in her marriage to a fantasy of what it could be like with Pete.

“I once knew someone,” Deanna says quietly, “who had a wonderful husband, and a small baby. She and her husband were childhood sweethearts. They met at camp when they were teens, and had always known they were going to get married and be together forever. They had a great relationship, until the baby came along. He didn’t know how to adjust to fatherhood, so he threw himself into work, and was hardly ever home. She was left on her own with this screaming, colicky baby, in a new town where they’d recently moved for his work, and she started to hate him.” Andi sits forward, rapt.

“She would lie in bed at night and dream about divorce, wonder whether she could make it as a single mom. Because she’d just moved to town, she didn’t have close girlfriends, she didn’t know whether other women were going through the same thing. She just thought she was the loneliest girl in the world, and nothing was as lonely as loneliness in a marriage. Eventually, she found a student who would come in every day and babysit for a couple of hours, giving her some time to herself. At first, she didn’t know what to do. She’d go to the grocery store, and walk around town, window-shopping, not remembering what she used to do with her time in the days before she became a mother. She started going to the library. There was a sofa by a big picture window, with a great view. She started reading again, something she hadn’t been able to do since the baby was born, and every day she’d curl up for a couple of hours and lose herself in a great book.” Andi watches as Deanna’s eyes mist, thinking back to a long-ago time, knowing she is finally hearing the story that Deanna, fiercely private, had only ever hinted at before.

“There were tables in the room, and a few people sitting around working. She started to get to know them. They’d nod at one another, then smile, and after a while they’d find themselves sitting near each other in the café close by, and they’d start a conversation.

“One of them was a writer. He was published, and even though she didn’t recognize him, she knew his name, and she was drawn to his quiet intelligence. They started meeting at the café by chance, and he asked her questions. He made her feel … special. At a time when she felt like a harassed mother who had lost all sense of self, he made her feel beautiful.”

Andi wants to reach over and tell her she is beautiful, that how could she ever think anything else, but she stays silent. Listening.

“She started to look for him. On the days he wasn’t at the library, or the café, she felt a wave of disappointment, which she tried to bury in the pages of the book, but it was hard. She’d find herself thinking about him at home. She’d be making dinner for her husband, who would always get home later than planned, and she’d think of something the writer had said earlier that day, and she’d find herself smiling. Soon, they were e-mailing each other. At first short, pithy e-mails, but they quickly became long and involved. She found herself revealing herself to him in a way she had never done with anyone else, the privacy of the computer screen creating a sense of intimacy that she had never found anywhere else.”

Andi nods. She knows the power of e-mail.

“She started to think of him as her best friend, refusing to admit she couldn’t stop thinking about him, that he had become the focus of her every waking thought. It carried on like that for months. She would never have had an affair with him; she’d never been unfaithful in her life. It just felt so good to have someone who could see into her soul; it felt so good to feel … complete. They were walking in the park one day, and he turned to her and told her he thought she was his soul mate. It threw her completely. She was furious with him for saying the words, and she stormed off and spent the rest of the day in tears. She tried not to see him, which she managed for about a week. A week in which she was plunged back into the loneliness again, a week she spent trying to hide the tears in front of her child. They met after a week, and vowed not to let it change. Said that a mutual attraction didn’t mean they would
do
anything about it. He was separated, but he didn’t want to ruin her marriage. They made a pact that they would never have an affair. A month later, they slept together for the first time. It was wonderful, and terrible. She became the woman who climbed out of her lover’s bed and into her husband’s. She felt sick with the betrayal.”

Andi lays a hand on her arm to interrupt her. “How were things with her husband?”

“The same. Ships that pass in the night. The only way he knew how to deal with the shock of fatherhood, the change in their relationship, was to throw himself into work and distance himself further and further. He didn’t notice that she wasn’t present in their relationship anymore. I think mostly he was grateful that she seemed to be happy again. She started to think that she had made a terrible mistake with her husband. He had been her childhood sweetheart, but he had grown into someone she didn’t recognize, and it was clear to her that neither of them could make the other happy. She didn’t know how to leave him, though. Even though the writer wanted to build a life with her, and even though she wanted to build a life with him, she was terrified of actually telling him, of changing her life so dramatically, of causing so much upset.”

Andi is now so wrapped up in the story, she can feel Deanna’s pain as if it were her own, and her voice comes out in a whisper: “Her husband found out?”

“Of course. He knew about her friendship with the writer, and started to suspect, eventually going through her e-mails. She thought she had hidden them well enough, but he found them. All the pent-up passion and longing was in their e-mails. He read them all. She came home from being with the writer and found her husband sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of e-mails printed out, and tears running down his cheeks.”

There is a long silence. This time, Andi is the one to reach over and squeeze Deanna’s hand.

“She left him?”

Deanna shakes her head. “No. As soon as she saw her husband, she knew it was a terrible mistake. She knew she didn’t want the writer. Maybe she had never wanted the writer; she just wanted to be … seen? Acknowledged?” Deanna shrugs. “She wanted to stop being so lonely, and it seemed that he was the perfect man to do that. She’d removed herself from the marriage by fantasizing about the writer, about all that their life would be, how perfect it would be, how happy she would be if she were with the writer instead of her husband. She was so lost in the fantasy, she never gave reality a chance.”

“What happened?”

“Her husband left. He cried all night, and in the morning he packed his things and walked out. She felt sick, and scared, and all of a sudden, the comfort the writer was willing to provide didn’t seem so comforting. They tried to continue their relationship for a while, but once her husband had gone, she didn’t want the writer anymore. She wanted her husband, who was also”—Deanna gives Andi a pointed look—“the best man in the world. She threw it all away for a fantasy.” Deanna blinks, and looks Andi straight in the eye.

“He never gave you another chance?” Andi had heard rumors that Deanna had once had an affair with a famous author, but she had never offered her story, and Andi had never asked. Until now.

Deanna shakes her head. “He said he could never trust me again.”

“You regret it. Clearly.”

“Oh Andi. It was the biggest single fuck-up of my life. I miss my husband to this day. He’s married now, to Theresa, as you know, and she’s great. She’s amazing to my kid, they’re blissfully happy, but you know what? It should have been me. And every time I pick up my kid, every time I pull into their driveway, I know that she is living my life, and the only person I have to blame for it is me. Andi, my sweet?” Deanna’s tone is urgent, intense. “I love you. I care about you. And I believe that Ethan is one of the greats. If you were married to someone else, I might have different advice, but Emily will not be at home forever, and don’t, please don’t, make the mistake of thinking your happiness lies elsewhere, or with someone else. Don’t make the same mistake as me.”

Andi holds Deanna’s gaze, then sinks her head in her hands. “Oh, God,” she says with a groan. “It’s just all so damned hard.”

“I know.” Deanna gives a wry smile. “It is all so damned hard.”

Sixteen

Emily sits at the other end of the row of seats in the waiting room, her arms crossed protectively over her chest, staring at the ground, refusing to acknowledge Andi and Ethan.

Ethan shoots Emily worried glances every few seconds, pretending to watch CNN on the TV screen high up in the corner, from time to time making attempts at humor, looking at Emily to try to include her, draw her out of her funk, but she will not look up, will not meet his eyes.

Andi pretends to watch the television screen, jittery with anxiety. They are here to discuss what to do, and although nobody has uttered the word “abortion,” it is the unspoken cloud that is hovering above all their heads. Andi’s thoughts keep coming back to it, no matter how hard she tells herself they are here only to explore the options, and she is so upset, she cannot look at Emily.

She cannot believe she is here, cannot believe that the possibility of a baby is right here, at their fingertips, and instead they might be going to destroy a life.

What would I do?
she thinks.
What would I do if I were seventeen and pregnant. Would I have an abortion? Could I?
She doesn’t know. She only knows that now, as a woman in her forties, desperate for a child of her own, the thought of abortion makes her feel ill.

Now, as a woman in her forties, she would do anything,
anything,
to have a child. They talked, early on, when they first learned pregnancy was no longer a probability, about adoption. Ethan determined it wouldn’t be the right thing for them to do. To this day, she knows that Ethan didn’t want to adopt not because he didn’t want more children but because it would have upset Emily.

Emily had made it quite clear, from the beginning, how disgusted she would be, how she would leave home and never speak to him again if he dared to have another child.

Ethan had laughed her down, but behind the forced laughter, his fear was palpable. Andi knew that he regarded her loss of fertility as a hidden blessing, a welcome relief. When she brought up adoption, which she did regularly in those early days, he changed the subject, or just said he wasn’t ready, that they should just enjoy being together for a while.

When Andi pushed, he said they already had two children, that they were lucky they were healthy and happy (although Emily had never exactly been happy), and that he was done.

He didn’t want to be a father to a baby in his late forties, he said. He didn’t want to be in his sixties with a child graduating from high school. He was tired, and there were enough moving parts without having to add another to the mix. He loved Andi, and he knew it was hard, and it would be one thing if she somehow, miraculously, became pregnant and they then had to deal with it, but another thing entirely to adopt. It wasn’t something he could do.

He was sorry, and he loved Andi, but no. Adoption wasn’t an option.

She still harbored a hope that a miracle would happen, and she would indeed somehow, miraculously, become pregnant, but short of that, she had grudgingly, sometimes resentfully, come to accept that she wouldn’t have a baby, a child of her own.

Until now.

She was driving through town when the thought came to her. What if … what if Emily had the baby. What if Emily gave the baby to them, if she and Ethan adopted the baby, raised it as their own.

The fantasy grew, Andi’s heart filling with anticipatory joy, until she remembered that the mother would be Emily. Emily would never let that happen, would never give Andi the one thing she really wants. It isn’t even worth thinking about.

*   *   *

Here they are, in the waiting room, with Emily hating everyone and everything, wishing she were anywhere but here, Ethan feeling like his life is spinning out of control with no idea how to get it back, and Andi seeing her last chance at happiness being snatched away from her.