Bitter Sweet (62 page)
‘I don’t mind telling you, Roy, that I never been partial to the wife my boy picked. Your daughter would’ve made a better one all the way around. It breaks my heart that they can’t be together to raise this baby, but that don’t excuse him
Roy
studied the baby. ‘Things are sure different than when you and I were young, aren’t they, Anna?’
‘That’s for sure. You wonder just what this world’s coming to.’
They thought awhile, then
Roy
said, ‘I’ll tell you something that’s changed for the better though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They let grandpas in the delivery room these days. I helped my Maggie bring this little one into the world. Would you believe that, Anna?’
‘Oh, pshaw! You!’ She looked at him wide-eyed.
‘That’s right. Me. A meat-cutter. Stood right there and helped Maggie breathe right, and watched this one get born. It was something, I tell you.’
‘I bet it was. I just bet it was.’
Studying the baby again, they contemplated the wonder and the disappointment of it all.
Anna got home at
that night and called Eric immediately.
‘I need you out here. Got a pilot light out and I can’t get the blame thing lit.’
‘Now?’
‘You want that range to blow up and me with it?’
‘Can’t Mike check it?’
‘Mike ain’t home.’
‘Well, where is he?’ Eric asked disgruntledly.
‘How the deuce should I know? He ain’t home, that’s all, now are you comin’ out here or not?’
‘Oh, all right. I’ll be there in half an hour.’
She hung up the phone with a clack and sat down sternly to wait.
When Eric walked in twenty-five minutes later, he made straight for the kitchen range.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it. Sit down,’ Anna ordered.
He came up short. ‘What do you mean, there’s nothing wrong with it?’
‘I mean there’s nothing wrong with it. Now sit down. I want to talk to you.’
‘About what?’
‘I went to the hospital an saw your daughter tonight.’
‘You what!”
‘Saw Maggie, too. Barbara’took me.
He swore under his breath.
‘I asked her to because none of my boys offered. This is a real fine kettle of fish, sonny.’
‘Ma, the last thing I need is to get my ass chewed by you.’
‘And the last thing Maggie Pearson needs is a baby without a father. What the devil were you thinking, to have an affair with her? You’re a married man!’
He put on a stubborn jaw and said nothing.
“Does
Nancy
know about this?’
‘Yes!’ he snapped.
Anna rolled her eyes and muttered something in Norwegian.
Eric glared at her.
‘What the hock kind of marriage you got anyway?’
‘Ma, this is none of your business!’
‘When you bring one of my grandchildren into this world, I make it my business!’
‘You don’t seem to realize that I hurt right now, too!’
‘I’d take a minute to feel sorry for you if I wasn’t so danged disgusted with you! Now I may not think the sun rises and sets on that wife of yours, but she’s still your wife, and that gives you some responsibilities.’
‘Nancy and I are working things out. She’s changing. She has been since she lost the baby.’
‘What baby’s that? I had four of my own and I lost two more, and I know what a pregnant woman looks like when I see one. Why, she was no more pregnant than I am.’
Eric gaped. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Ma!’
‘You heard me. I don’t know what kind of game she’s playing, but she was no five months pregnant. Why, she didn’t have so much as a pimple on her belly.’
‘Ma, you’re dreaming! Of course she was pregnant!’
‘I doubt it, but that’s neither here nor there. If she knew you were stepping out with Maggie she probably told the lie to keep from losing you. What I want to make sure of is that you start acting like a husband- of which woman, I don’t care. But one at a time, Eric Severson, do you hear me!’
‘Ma, you don’t understand! Last winter when I started seeing Maggie I had every intention of leaving
Nancy
.’
“Oh, so that excuses you, huh? Now you listen here, sonny! I know you, I know how that new daughter of yours is working on you, and unless I miss my guess, you’re going to want to hang around Maggie’s and see that little one now and then, and play father a little bit. Well, fine, you do that if that’s what you choose. But you start doing that, and you know what else will start up again. I’m not stupid, you know. I saw those roses in her room, and I saw the look on her face every time she glanced at them. When two people got feelings like that for one another and a baby, to boot, that’s a pretty tough thing to control. So, fine, you go see your daughter and her mother. But first you get yourself free and clear of the woman you got! Your dad and I raised you to know right from wrong, and keeping two women is wrong, no matter what. Do I make myself understood?’
His jaw was set as he answered, ‘Yes, clearly’
‘And do I have your promise that you won’t darken Maggie’s door again unless you got a divorce paper in your hand?’
When no reply came she repeated, ‘Do I?’
‘Yes!’ he snapped, and slammed out of the house.
Chapter 20
It took monumental control for Eric to keep from accosting
Nancy
with his mother’s suspicions the minute he walked in the house. His emotions were too raw, his confusion too fresh, and as it turned out, she was asleep. He lay beside her, wondering if Ma was right, going back over the dates. It had been sometime in early July when she’d told him she was four months pregnant, and he’d commented about her not showing. What had she said? Some passing remark about him looking at her when she was naked. He had, in time, and he’d wondered about her thinness, but she’d explained it away by reminding him that she exercised daily, was extremely fit and diet-conscious and that the doctor had told her that the baby was small. By late August when she claimed to have miscarried she would have been in her fifth month. He tried to remember what Barb looked like in her fifth month, but Barb was a bigger woman all around, and what man besides a father is assessing a woman’s girth in terms of months? What about Maggie?
She’d been almost five months pregnant when she’d stormed away from him in the rain, and, like
Nancy
, she hadn’t been wearing maternity clothes either. Maybe Ma was wrong after all.
In the morning he went into
Nancy
’s office under the guise of filing the stubs from the bills he’d paid three days earlier. He was standing before the open drawer of a tall metal file cabinet when she passed in the hall. ‘Hey,
Nancy
,’ he called, forcing an offhand expression, ‘shouldn’t we be getting a bill from that hospital in
Omaha
?’
She reappeared in the doorway looking trim and chic in a pair of grey trousers and a thick Icelandic wool sweater.
“I took care of it already,’ she answered, and started away.
‘Hey, wait a minute’
Impatiently, she returned. ‘What? I’ve got to be at the beauty shop at ten.’
‘You took care of it? You mean the insurance didn’t cover it?’ She had excellent insurance through Orlane.
‘Yes, of course it did. I mean, it will when I send in the forms.’
‘You haven’t done that yet?’
Nancy
was the most efficient book-keeper he knew. For her to neglect paperwork for three months was completely out of character.
‘Hey, what is this, some kind of inquisition?’ she returned, piqued.
‘I’m just wondering, that’s all. So what did you do, pay the hospital by cheque?’
‘I thought we agreed, you take care of your bills and I’ll take care of mine,’ she replied, and hurried away.
When she had gone he began searching the files more thoroughly. Because of her travelling it made sense for them to have separate cheque accounts but since her paperwork had always been heavy they’d agreed that he’d take care of paying their household bills. The insurance was one of those grey areas that crossed boundaries since he too was covered on her policy, .therefore the paperwork for both of them was filed together.
He flipped through the folder but found only their dental claims for the past several years, a two-year-old claim for a throat culture he’d had, plus those for her annual pap smears. He searched every folder in the four-drawer file cabinet, then turned and sat down at her desk. It was a sturdy, flat-topped oak piece probably eighty years old.
She’d bought it at a bank auction years ago, and he’d never snooped in it for anything beyond an occasional paper dip or pen.
Pulling open the first drawer, he felt like a burglar: He found her cancelled cheques with no trouble, neatly filed and labelled, the most recent covering the month of October. He went back to August’s and opened up the summary sheet, laid it on the desk and scanned it. Nothing to
St Joseph
’s Hospital, or to any strange doctors or clinics.
He scanned it again, just to make sure.
Nothing.
He checked September’s. Still nothing.
October’s. Still no hospital.
He took off his glasses and dropped them on the blotter, spread his elbows wide on the desktop and covered his mouth with both hands.
Had he been that gullible? Had she lied to him as Ma suggested, to keep him away from Maggie? With his misgivings mounting, he searched on.
Cheque stubs from Orlane. Clothing receipts from stores he’d never seen. A correspondence file containing business letters with
He zipped it open and recognized the computer printout of a hospital bill even before he withdrew it from the pouch.
Extracting the folded sheets, he glimpsed code words - Pulse Oximeter, Disp Oral Airway- that immediately diluted his suspicion. He unfolded the four connected sheets, saw the name of a hospital at the top and breathed easier.
Wait a minute.
The hospital was not
St Joseph
’s in
Omaha
, but
Minneapolis
. The admit/dis charge dates were not August 1989, but May 1986. Three years ago?
What the hell?
He frowned over the codes and descriptions, but most of them meant little to him.
Oxyto3 in oU Ceftriaxone lnj z GM Drugs, he surmised, and read on, frowning.
Chux Pkg of 5 Culture Delivery Room Normal D & C Post Delivery D & C? He didn’t know what words it stood for, but he knew what it meant. She’d had a D & C in May of 1986 Dread filled his throat as he read the remainder of the list.
By the time he reached the end his insides were quaking. He stared at the corner of an aluminium picture frame on the opposite wall while tremors spread down his legs and up his arms. His lips were compressed. His throat hurt. The sensation spread until he felt as if he were on the verge of choking. After a full minute of escalating distress he leapt from the chair, catapulting it backward as he stalked from the room with the bill in his hand. Out to the truck. Started it angrily. Ramming it into reverse. Digging up brown grass as he backed from the yard. Roaring down the hill and around the corner doing thim/in first with the transmission howling. Speed shifting into second an instant short of blowing up the engine, then thundering down the highway like a World War II bomber on a runway.
Fifteen minutes later when he stormed into Dr Neil Lange’s office in Ephraim, he was in no mood to be waylaid.
‘I want to see Doc Lange,’ he announced at the receptionist’s window, his fingers rapping the ledge like a woodpecker at work.
Patricia Carpenter glanced up and smiled. She was plump and cute and used to help him with his algebra when they were in the ninth grade.
‘Hi, Eric. I don’t think you have an appointment, do you?’
‘No, but it won’t take more than sixty seconds.’
She glanced at the appointment book. ‘He’s really full today. I’m afraid the best we can do would be four this afternoon.’
His temper erupted and he shouted, ‘Don’t give me any shit, Pat! I said it would only take sixty seconds, and he’s only got one patient left out here before he goes to lunch, so don’t tell me I can’t see him! You can charge me for a goddamned office call if you want but I’ve got to see him!’