Between Husbands and Friends (38 page)

I’m so surprised I laugh. “Chip, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m not. I’m telling you, Lucy, that if I took this to court, I would win full or partial custody of Jeremy.”

“But you wouldn’t do this. To Jeremy. To Max. To me!”

“Jeremy is my—”

“Jeremy is Max’s child. You know that. You’ve seen him with Max. Come on, Chip, have some compassion. We’ve got so much to go through with Jeremy’s condition, it’s going to be hellish. Don’t make it worse by trying to take Jeremy away.”

“You think that Max is the best father for Jeremy.”

“Yes. There’s a powerful connection between them, Chip. It may not be ‘natural,’ but it is real. They are father and son.”

Chip doesn’t move, but it seems that a light in his eyes dims. He takes a deep breath.

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” Something catches in my throat. I want to tell him more. I desired this man. I loved him. In a way, I love him still. I regret all the pain we’ve caused, but I will never regret that desire, and what it brought to us. But my son waits for me and right now that’s all that matters. “I need to go home.”

“Lucy … I don’t know how to say this, but if you need any money for Jeremy … I want to help. If I can help financially …”

“Thank you. I think we’ll be okay.” I start up the stairs toward the car.

“Lucy?” Chip calls. “Later? In a year or two? When Jeremy’s older? I do want to tell him that I’m his genetic father.”

I stare down at him. “Yes, of course. Max thinks so, too. Just not yet, Chip, please.”

“Okay. Okay. I want to be clear about this, Lucy. Because you want me to, I’m backing off.” In the shadowy blue light of the foyer, with the rain-streaked glass behind him, with his raincoat hanging in folds past his knees, Chip looks like a creature underwater, almost like a merman, and I realize how he, too, is a creature caught between worlds, a man who cannot be a father to his natural son.

“Thank you.” This time I go up the steps without looking back. I do not hear steps coming after me. I find my car, unlock it, climb in. I drive to the exit, pay the ticket, then steer
my car out into the night, into the falling rain.

The house smells like apples. The answering machine blinks imperiously. Midnight and Cinnamon materialize when I turn on the kitchen light, insinuating themselves around my ankles, scolding me with stereophonic mews for my absence. I dump great cups of dry food into their bowls and give them each a plate of canned food which they set upon ardently, purring and waving their tails as they eat. I take the time for a quick shower, grateful for all the bourgeois comforts that refresh my body, the sharp scent of the soap, the grassy green drift of shampoo. I hurriedly dress in clean clothes and pack a bag to take to the hospital. The house is unnaturally quiet with everyone gone; I’m not surprised that the cats are following me from room to room.

“Max will be home late, kids,” I tell them.

Cinnamon protests by rolling on her back, showing me her seductive stomach. How, she suggests, looking at me upside down, could you leave someone as gorgeous as me, alone? I stop to pet her luxuriously striped silky fur, then hurry back to my car, back to Children’s Hospital.

By the time I’ve parked and traced my path back through the hospital, it’s after eleven, and Jeremy is asleep. The lights are off by the bed, but enough light illuminates the room so that Max, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, can read the brochures I read earlier.

He looks up at me, his face sad, weary. “How are things at home?”

“There are about a million messages on the answering machine. I didn’t even bother to listen to them. How’s Jeremy?”

“The nurse was in about thirty minutes ago. She said that his temperature’s down.”

“Good.” I stare down at my sleeping son.

Max stretches and looks at his watch. “It’s almost midnight.” He yawns and pulls on his jacket. “I’ll go into the office in the morning, then come in. I should be back here by ten.” When he looks at Jeremy, his face is tender, full of emotion. Then he inhales deeply and straightens his shoulders, steeling himself to leave.

I walk with him to the door of the room. It’s as if this hospital bedroom has already
become a kind of home for us, like a tiny apartment.

“All right then,” Max says. When he looks at me, the tenderness has left his face, replaced by a cold flatness. This is how he looks when he’s depressed, and his jaw bristles with a day’s growth of beard. It’s that beard that sets me off, and that look. “Good night.”

It’s the way he walks away from me without kissing me, without touching me, without seeing me.

My heart begins to race double time. Something explodes in my belly, something hot and bitter rises in my throat. I can’t breathe. Hot blood drums at my ears, yet my fingers have grown cold. I can scarcely stand.

A panic attack? Yes.
This
is what my panic attacks are about.

“No,” I say. I don’t shout it, but I don’t whisper it either, and at the far end of the hall a nurse looks at me sharply.

Max turns.

“No,” I say, more softly, but my passion makes the one word vibrate. Leaving Jeremy’s room, I stride out into the hall. Taking Max by the arm, I pull him away from the medical unit and into the open corridor where elevators and telephones line the walls. “No, Max, you can’t leave like that. I won’t let you.”

“What are you talking a—”

“You said you’ll stay with us.”

“I did. And I meant it.”

“Do you think you’re doing us a favor?”

Max runs his hand through his dark curls. “Come on, Lucy. I’m beat.”

“I don’t want to live like this, Max.”

“Lucy, the boy is—”

“I’m not talking about Jeremy. I’m talking about
you.
I don’t want to live with you acting as if you’re doing us a great big stinking favor with your presence.”

“Lucy, this is hardly the time or the place—”

“This is absolutely the time and the place!” I’m not yelling, but I’m shaking all over, and my voice trembles. “If you stay with us, Max, then damn it, you’ve got to do it right. You can’t hang around Jeremy and Margaret and me with the dead fish, hangdog face you’ve given us before.”

“Come on, Lucy, I can’t help it if I’m miserable.”

“No. But you can
show
us your misery! You can let us help you deal with it! And Max,
you’ve got to see a psychiatrist and get some antidepressants!”

“Lucy, it’s not necessary.”

“Yes, it is necessary. I mean it, Max. You’ve got to change. If you want to stay with us, you’ve got to really want to stay. And you’ve got to show us you want to stay. You’ve got to show
me
you want to stay. This is going to be
hell
we’re headed into with Jeremy. This is only the beginning, and it’s going to be scary and heart-wrenching and the most difficult thing I’ve ever even heard of. But you know what? I can do it, and I can do it without you, and I’d
rather
do it without you than with you dragging around depressed. It’s too hard on me, Max, I get lonely, and afraid and full of a useless anger, and the children and I feel like you love everyone at the paper and don’t care for us at all—”

“That’s not true. That’s never true.”

“All right, but that’s the way it seems to us. Max, can I tell you what it’s like when you’re depressed? It’s not just that you don’t talk to us. You don’t even
look
at us. You snap to attention whenever anyone from the paper calls, but when we try to talk to you, you stare into space, or you slam out of the house or you hide in your study, and you pretend you don’t hear us, or maybe you really don’t hear us, and that’s pretty damned scary as well as insulting, don’t you think?”

I’m pacing now, and the words are rising up out of me as if carried on a geyser that’s been capped and covered over for too long. Miserably, Max bows his head; he looks like he’d cover his ears with his hands if he could.

“Do you know how I feel when you’re depressed? When I have to ask Roland how you are because you won’t tell me, and Roland is
kind
, he understands, he’s not like some of the secretaries or bright young girl reporters, those disingenuous little hypocrites who make it clear that
they
understand you when your old rhino-hided wife can’t, who smile at me with such fucking compassion in their eyes that it makes me want to vomit on their shoes! When you’re depressed, Max, you’re like a black hole in our house, and everything revolves around you, all our lives absolutely stop while we try to figure out what’s going on with you and how serious it is and how long it’s going to last and whether or not by any miraculous chance one of us, your son or your daughter or your wife, could possibly matter enough to get through to you. It’s why I turned to Chip, for God’s sake!”

At the far end of the corridor, a pair of nurses eye us. Max and I glare at each other, the air between us absolutely shimmering with tension.

After a moment, Max rubs the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t know,” he says softly, “I’m
sorry. I’ll … I’ll try.”

I turn my back on the nurses and modulate my voice. “Try. What does that mean?”

“It means … all right. I’ll see someone about antidepressants.”

“You promise.”

“I promise.”

“This week.”

“When I find time …”

“No! Not when you find time. Max, I’m not waiting. I need your help now. I need your love. I need your
passion.
It’s the only way I’m going to make it through this. For God’s sake, Max, we have to
love
each other if we’re going to love Jeremy and Margaret.” I can’t believe I have any more tears left in me, but I discover that I do. My face is suddenly wet, and tears fall on my shirt, on my hands.

Max squints, holding back his own tears. “I was here tonight,” he reminds me. “I skipped town meeting to be here.”

“That’s good. I know. I’m so glad. I’m so—impressed. But I need more, Max. I need your love. I need your touch.”

He looks down, and the slant of his head, the way his features droop, making him look old and vulnerable, tugs at my heart.

“It’s you I love,” I whisper. “Don’t be afraid.”

He flinches, as if I’ve struck him, and perhaps I have. I’ve touched him where he’s most sensitive. The most terrible thing about marriage, I suppose, is that we know and understand each other’s weaknesses and fears as much as we know our strengths and desires.

“I’m afraid, too, Max, for Jeremy. I’m
terrified.
But we should be. This is scary stuff we’re dealing with. But think how brave Jeremy is going to have to be. You have to be brave, too. You have to be brave first. If you’re going to stay with me, with me and Jeremy, you can’t do it halfway. You can’t do it and expect me to be grateful. You have to do it with all your heart and soul and body, Max. You’ve got to conquer your fears. You’ve got to show Jeremy and me you’re doing it. You’ve got to show us how to do it.”

“You’re asking a lot.”

“I know.”

“What can I say?” He looks tired, drawn, old, and as young as the boy I fell in love with in college.

“Say you’ll call a psychiatrist tomorrow.”

He looks at me bleakly. Then he nods, once. “I’ll call a psychiatrist tomorrow.”

“All right then.”

We are facing each other like adversaries, our faces tense, our bodies taut. And all at once Max looks at me, really looks at me. A tenderness falls over his face. “I do love you, Lucy.”

I dissolve at these words. I can’t go on. I’m nearly crouching on the floor when Max reaches out to catch me. He holds me against him as we cry together, and the weeping hurts, but the embrace sustains us both.