Craig settled himself into the small, battered chair beside her hospital bed and punched his cell phone.
“I don't think you're supposed to use those here.”
He shrugged, put a finger up, and listened. He shut the phone. “There wasn't a sign around here. Maybe that's just for intensive care or emergency.”
“Water,” Gretchen said. “I'm going to need some.”
He set the phone beside his chair, picked up a miniature plastic pitcher on the table beside her, walked over to the sink, flipped a lever, and collected cold water. The pitcher spilled a few drops on the way back to her bedside.
“Better wipe that up,” she said, handing him a tissue. “Someone might slip.”
He took the proferred tissue, bent carefully after pulling up his slacks to protect the crease, and dabbed at the spots. He tossed the tissue into the can nearby while she drank. “You know when they call these floors dirty, they mean dirty with a capital D?” He shuddered. “I hate thinking what's been down there.” He picked up her book, her discs, her music player, and the headphones that lay littering the counter under the window and stuffed them into her overnight bag. He searched under the bed, and pulled out a hair tie and a sock, holding them between his finger and thumb, like dead rats. He zipped the bag shut, then looked hard at her. “Shouldn't you comb your hair? Start getting ready? You need to comb your hair.”
“My hair is fine, Craig.”
He found her comb, got behind her, pushed her shoulders forward, and began to comb it.
“Well?” Gretchen asked, wincing as he yanked through a tangle. “Talk, why don't you? You want to talk. You insist on talking. I'm a captive audience.”
“How's the leg?”
“When I move, it feels like it's in a meat grinder. The bones are loose inside. Don't ask me about it. I feel feeble at the moment, not myself. I want to cry.”
“Have you taken your pills?”
“An hour ago. I'm in my prime, in terms of being pain-free. Another hour and I'm going to be chewing the sheets. Then there's that final glorious hour, when I'll be murderous or in tears.”
“Another hour and you'll be home.”
“I don't think I'm ready.”
“The doctor said you're ready.”
“I don't believe other people anymore. I believe the evidence of my own senses.”
“Gretchen, don't be difficult. They kept you in one night and all day today. Now you can go home.”
“I have a temperature.”
“A low temperature is common after surgery.”
“Craig, they put a plate in my leg! This is not a normal situation!”
“You panic too easily.” He examined her hair critically, gave it another rough swipe, and put the comb away. “You overreact.” He sat on the edge of her bed, near her hurt leg. “I need you to be reasonable, here, okay?”
“What's going on?”
“It's about us.”
“You were trying to tell me something at the dance when I fell.”
“That's right. And that was a pretty severe reaction you had, falling like that, breaking your leg. I guess you knew somehow what I needed to say was very serious.”
“Maybe the anticipation was too much for me. You've been wanting to tell me for a long time. I thought you might never get up the courage. You're seeing someone.”
He moved away from her and took a breath. “You know?”
“Don't tell me about her, Craig, okay? I really don't want to talk about her.”
“You knew and you didn't tell me. It's been so hard, Gretchen. Do you know, there's never a good time to tell someone something like this. Never! Not when she's brushing her teeth, not when she's putting on her nylons in the morning. Not at dinner when she's tired.” He smiled a rueful smile. “Not when she's dancing, obviously.”
“I agree. The dancing started out so promising. I was enjoying myself.”
“But you knew all along,” he said.
“I didn't want to know.”
“Now you do.”
“Now you've unloaded, can we just forget about it?”
“Gretchen, it's over between us. I'm leaving.”
“No!”
“I packed yesterday.”
“While I was in surgery?”
“I know… it's low. But I've been trying to move out for weeks, and you stall me, and you act so horribly nice, or you get sick or have a rotten day at work. Don't tell me you didn't know things were bad. You act like a clown, stumbling around, just wild. You'll do anything to avoid facing this.”
“You think I broke my leg on purpose?”
“You're a good dancer.”
“You think that?”
“Well, did you?”
“You've got such an ego. I don't think I ever realized. I'm seeing a side of you that I don't like very much. And when did I become a clown in your eyes? After you met the lovely alternate lady?”
“She really has nothing to do with this.”
“Liar. If you hadn't lined her up, you couldn't leave. You're no one unless you're with someone.”
“See what I mean? Why would you want to hold on to someone like me? I'm a big nobody to you, a parasite. You've lost all respect.”
“I've heard about this happening to people. I just never thought it would happen to us. Marriages have ups and downs, that's natural.”
“We've been down so long…”
“I know what you're going to say, that dumb thing, it looks like up to me. It's awful when you can predict every word someone's about to say! But, Craig, you always told me you loved me. What about our baby?”
“You're pregnant?”
The lengthy pause made him drop his cell phone. “No,” she said finally. “But I thought we were ready. You said we were ready.”
He pushed hair off his forehead. “Scared me there for a minute.” He picked up the phone, fiddling with it, opening it, and closing it. “Touché.”
“Are we fighting? I thought you were telling me something.”
“We don't have to fight. You're right.”
“But if you insist on talking about this… aberration… I need an explanation. You married me for a reason. For life.”
“We've been married ten years.”
“Not a long marriage…”
“A very long time. Listen, this was a bad idea. Let's get you home and talk there. They're doing the paperwork. Why don't you put your clothes on?”
But Gretchen picked up a magazine instead.
He peered into a brown paper sack on the floor beside him, then tossed it onto her bed. “Please, get dressed.”
“The paperwork could take hours.”
“Or a few minutes. That nurse looked efficient.”
“I'm tired. I just had a damn operation. And now you want to take me home so that you can leave me there alone. How am I supposed to cope? I can't even walk!”
“Gretchen, you said you needed a ride, so I came. I'll rent you a wheelchair. We'll call your mom, locate a goddamned attendant. You'll be taken care of, I promise.”
“I had to beg you because otherwise you wouldn't have come, would you?”
“I don't have much time. I want to get back. And you know I hate these places. Don't you want to go home? You'll be much more comfortable there.”
“I need more time. I have a lot of pain.” A bulging white splint covered her left leg all the way down from the knee, but she wasn't looking at it. She was looking at him.
“Hospitals are full of sick people…”
“That time I sprained my wrist, you got Mom to bail me out. I guess I'm one of the sick ones, again, huh? You'd rather avoid me completely.”
“My policy is, and always has been, get out as soon as you can. Get home to your own nice clean sheets, fresh pillows…”
“Were you hoping she'd be waiting for you out there?” She looked out through the large window into the mucky yellow puddles of the dark parking lot. Headlights lit the blue plastic curtain behind her and made the branches of a sprawling oak tree outside blobs against the night sky. She had turned off the light over her bed, turned off the television. The only light aside from a reading light over her book came through the window. “Well, were you?”
“No.”
“Where do you think she is right now? Praying I'll let you go? Is she the one you keep calling?”
Three discreet knocks on the side of the open door announced the arrival of another gang of medical personnel, an attendant after blood, a nurse to pull out Gretchen's IV, a helper to knock around the dinner tray. They marched in and out of the room, as strict as army troops on maneuvers.
Gretchen pushed hard on the cotton they left behind on her hand where the IV had entered. “It hurts,” she said. She started to cry. Craig stood up, put a hand on her shoulder, and held on while she shook.
A sudden commotion escalated the echoing in the hallway. Several people burst into the room, boisterous as a theater troupe leaping onstage for a bow. The lights blasted on, and the softness of the moment was destroyed by the details, the look on Craig's face, so put-upon. The wrinkled sheets, all balled up at the foot of her bed. The huge white bandages on her left leg. Gretchen stopped crying and Craig left her side. A young girl, black-haired, pierced with metal loops from her eyebrow right down to her sandaled toes, pushed the blue curtain aside, came over to the bed, and looked sympathetically at Gretchen.
“I'm guessing I'm your roommate. Katie. What happened to you?” she said, her eyes brushing over Craig to Gretchen and back again.
“I broke my leg.”
“Ouch,” she said. “How'd you do it?”
“Dancing.”
“Really? Well, that's almost cool.”
“What about you?” Gretchen asked.
“I have an abscess on my boob.” She disappeared behind the curtain. A woman with short, wispy, gray-blonde hair smiled apologetically. She wore pink lipstick, and a matching sleeveless blouse that showed loose skin under the arms. “Can I have your extra chair?” she asked.
Craig nodded. The woman, Katie's mother, possibly, pulled the chair to the foot of the other bed. Katie's skin was brown, the woman's was stark, glaring white. A big, dark, bearded man with a British accent filled up another chair.
Gretchen pulled the curtain so that only the lower part of her body remained exposed and she could not see her neighbor's head, although she could see most of the bed and the rest of the room. Craig, sitting toward the foot of her bed again, could see almost everything, although the curtain provided a psychological shield. Everyone acted as if they were in entirely separate realms.
A discussion started up on the other side of the room. With help, the girl climbed on the bed and promptly started to whine. “I'm so hungry,” she said. “Why can't I eat something? Mother, have you got anything I can eat?”
“I'm so sorry, honey, but you have to wait,” her mother said. “They won't let me feed you.”
“They'll give you anesthesia before the… they fix things up,” said the Brit. “They don't want you tossing up food in there.”
“Why did this have to happen?” the girl asked. She slurped water noisily. “This hurts, you know. I feel like utter crap. I might as well be dead.”
The Brit winced and reached out a hand to her. “Don't drink too much. They said not to.”
“Oh, honey,” the girl's mother murmured. “They'll take care of you soon.” She crawled up onto the bed beside her daughter. “Daddy and I will make sure they do.”
But the whining intensified into pained bleating, and no one came. After a while, the dad left to find someone, ostensibly to demand an explanation for the delay, but Gretchen and Craig knew why. Her surgery was unscheduled, not an emergency. She had to wait her turn. Daddy just had to do something. He couldn't bear to see his girl suffer.
Gretchen's eyes filled. She spoke softly to Craig so that no one else could hear. “I want you to tell me… I need to know. What happened to change my life so I can't recognize it anymore?”
“Gretchen,” Craig's voice was so low she could barely hear it, “I consider the matter settled. This isn't a negotiation. It's just upsetting for both of us and gets us nowhere.”
“I don't recognize myself in this.”
“People change,” he said. “You're hard to live with. Up, down, all over the place. Mad for no reason. Jumping out of your skin and all over me. I never know what you might do next. I feel ungrounded. I just want a happy life. Peace.”
“Did the feeling just… shift, like a dog jumping over to another lap? Did you tell her she's irresistible to you, like you did me?”
“Hush, now.” He pulled the sheet down. “Get up, Gretchen. Let's get going.”
“Did you think, oh, here's someone prettier than Gretchen, someone who will hold me in high esteem. Someone who won't nag me to work harder or slob around in an untidy house without lifting a finger to pick up.”
“Please put your clothes on.”
“How can you love someone and then not love them?” she asked. “I don't believe it's possible.”
Craig opened the brown sack, pulling out a blouse. He untied the threadbare blue print hospital gown that encased Gretchen and tried to pull it up over her head. She resisted, arms down at her sides, steely.
“You can't just stop loving.”
“Come on,” he said. “Come on.” When she continued to resist, he dropped his arms to his sides. He put one in his pocket.
“You wish it would ring, don't you? There's a woman out there, you're thinking. She'll welcome me without any pressure. But what I want to tell you, Craig, is that that's a temporary state in a relationship. It's after six months that matters, when you see the man's pores, and dirty underwear on the floor, when you notice he never flosses… I love you, defects and all. I love when you make a racket blowing your nose, and when you fret about the newspaper being late, and when you criticize me, then say it's because you care so much.”
The girl in the next bed whimpered, then moaned. Her cries were muffled, presumably by the arms of her mother.
“I decided”-Gretchen pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them-“that she must be hotter in bed, something along those lines. So last week I conducted some scientific tests. Remember, by the window? And then at the beach that Thursday morning. So early, fog everywhere… I may not have proved anything to you, but I proved a few things to myself. You're older, and you hate getting older. I mean, forty isn't so old, even though you feel it is. But there's such a thing as being graceful, you know. We could be graceful together.”
“Don't do this,” Craig said.
“Like during the dance, I felt happy with your arms around me, the love I felt for you right at that moment. I felt like it didn't matter that I'm not a perfect person. I felt accepted, for just a moment. Then… you chose a bad time to tell me, admit that. You're slightly guilty in that respect, too.”
“I never said a word!”
“You were going to. It felt like a truck crossing the centerline, coming at me.”
“You were drunk, just like you were the night before, you know, when you went to stay at your mom's. You were mad for days before I even said a word. Don't tell me you blame this situation on me.”
“Of course I do. I wish you would say you were sorry for everything.”
“If I say I'm sorry, will you get up?” He picked up her clothes, then set them down on the bed again. “And put on these god-awful clothes you brought?”
“No.”
“I'm just trying to… it wouldn't be respectful of me not to tell you, would it, Gretch? To live a big lie?”
“You show your respect for me by cheating?”
“Is it cheating if I tell you about it? We aren't even sleeping together yet.”
“Yet you want to move in with her.”
“Everything's in the car, ready to go. Now you know it all.”
“You plan to sleep with her tonight, if all goes well here. You expect to find her sitting by the fire, combing her neat hair, wearing the kind of negligee you like, something frothy and girly. She'll jump up, arms raised to hold you… It's a charming fantasy. I can't compete. I drink too much, I have no fashion sense, and at the moment, I can't even reach you to hug you without using a crutch.”
“I don't want to hurt you. You're hurting yourself.”
“Not true. You want honesty? I stumbled at the dance. I felt faint when I realized the moment had come and you wanted to end things. I simply fell. I didn't try to evade the truth. Although I was afraid, yes.”
“Tell me you'll be graceful now, Gretchen.”
“You want it easy.”
“Tell me we can get beyond this.”
“To a divorce? The house is mine. Where will you live? In some dingy, little apartment in a bad neighborhood?”
He looked startled. She had scored. “Let's not get into that. The lawyers will work things out so that they are fair.”
“Did you tell her about the back taxes we owe?”
“I refuse to talk about this. That's business. Right now is personal.”
“Okay, it's personal. You want to leave me for a younger blonde with black roots and a quiet voice.”
“How do you know all that?”
“No great detective work involved there. She's blonde with roots because you like blondes, and I'm blonde and no woman over twenty is a natural blonde. She's quiet, the better to listen to her hero. No doubt she drinks too much, too, or sings too loud like I do? She fancies herself in control, but sometimes she does outrageous, unbelievable things? She has to do something obnoxious.”
“No, she doesn't.”
Gretchen threw her magazine on the floor. “I really don't want to know about her and her delicate sensibilities!”
A drawn-out wail from behind the plastic curtain split her sentence in half.
“This isn't the place,” Craig said.
“It's the only place. After tonight, you won't see me. You'll be busy with her.”
“Please, Gretch, let's get going.” He punched the cell phone again. Again, there was no answer. He stood, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, one eye on the window. “Where's that damn nurse?” He checked the clock on the wall.
The Brit returned, successful, with a resident in tow. He sat back down in his chair in front of the sink. The mother removed herself from the bed. The tall, thin doctor, black bags big as old-fashioned doctor satchels pouched under his eyes, leaned momentarily against the wall for support, then moved toward the bed. “Where does it hurt?” he asked.
“It freaking hurts there, and there! It hurts all the way underneath!” she said. “I went to this clinic last week? And they gave me painkillers, that's it! Can you believe it? And now I end up here!”
“When did the pain get really bad?”
“Two days ago.”
“And when did you originally injure yourself?”
“Last weekend, on Saturday night. A week ago.”
“How did you do it?”
“I was frolicking,” she said. Weirdly, she giggled. “I was frolicking in the bushes, and I fell, and a twig or something caught on my nipple ring, you know?”
A shocked pause stopped all activity for a few seconds. The resident, who probably had seen it all and heard it all, paused in his scribbling. Even he seemed rattled. Gretchen held herself utterly still. Craig's mouth hung open, stalled at the start of a sentence.
“I never frolic,” said the doctor, and the relief in his voice-if such was the result of frolicking, then by God, he was glad to put in thirty-six-hour shifts for the rest of his natural life-shook the other people in the room, on both sides of the curtain out of their momentary arrest.
“Too busy to frolic,” the mother said. “You must work very hard.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “Um, you'll need to remove your jewelry for surgery, Ms. Heller.”
“All of it? Some of them won't go back in. They're permanent.”
“Okay,” the resident said. “Fine.”
“They made me remove my wedding ring,” Gretchen whispered to Craig. “Said you can't have anything metal in the operating room.”
“They don't want to tangle with her,” Craig said. “Don't want to get stuck with something sharp. Holy Christ, what's the matter with those parents? She looks completely savage. Her parents ought to be teaching her more about what it means to be human.”
“You're how old?” the resident asked Katie.
“Twenty-one.”
“Smoke?”
“Yep.”
“For how long?”
“Since I was ten. That's… uh…”
“Eleven years,” her mother offered helpfully.
“Right. Eleven years.”
“Drink?” the resident, from here on out unflappable, said.
“Yeah, to excess, regularly.”
Craig, listening across the curtain, ruffled his hair again, clearly quite upset.
And despite the obvious heat of the story bubbling behind Katie's words, the resident ignored the implications and moved right along. “Anything today?”
“No.”
“Street drugs?”
“No.”
Craig snorted. Gretchen put a hand to his lips to shush him. “Yeah,” he whispered, “she was running naked through the bushes and she doesn't take drugs. Right.”
“I imagine the staff know instantly what lies are being told. Like when they asked how much I weighed…” Gretchen said. “They can probably tell by looking.”
“Oh, you. You don't lie very well. Every crazy thing you do, you eventually confess.”
“You didn't know I knew about your girlfriend.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I didn't want to know. Maybe I wasn't ready until now.”
“Prescriptions?” the resident continued with the girl.
The father stood up. “I've got the list,” he said. “Already gave it to the nurse.”
The resident's head stayed bent over his clipboard. “Read 'em off.”
Katie's father listed at least a dozen medications in a clear English accent. The first ones, familiar names like Xanax, came out brightly, as though he were reciting a list of breakfast cereals. Several others he had trouble pronouncing, but he struggled until he had conveyed the information, and put the paper back into his pocket, satisfied.
“Okay, I was wrong,” Craig said. “She didn't need street drugs when she could get high legally ten different ways every day.”
“Diagnosis?” asked the resident through the curtain, a paragon of dispassion.
“Bipolar,” Katie said, sounding almost happy at being truly pegged. “And…”
At this point, Craig bumped into Gretchen's table and upset the water pitcher, so they didn't hear the rest of the diagnosis. But the next question from the doctor regained their attention. “Are you sexually active?”
“Not anymore,” Katie said, again filling her words with portent.
“One of those drugs that's supposed to make her sane must inhibit her libido,” Craig said, keeping his voice quiet, obviously fascinated.
“Where can I get some?” asked Gretchen. “Stop you from wanting to screw your newest blonde and any other willing women in your future. Nip your desire in the bud. Make you act your age.”
“Don't be bitter, Gretchen. That's ugly.”
“I'm not pretty but you used to think I was. I guess now all your blind loving goes her way. Now you think she's pretty. Now you see me in front of you, faded. I thought you had more character, Craig. You could have resisted.”
“I couldn't. You think you can control everything.”
“I do have control, Craig.”
“Nobody controls life.”
“I make a dozen decisions every day to regulate my behavior, to keep to the path I've picked. I don't grab for the man making eye contact in the elevator, even if he's handsome, and I'm lonely and ignored. I don't steal at the store even if it's something I want and nobody's looking. I won't sell my soul for a nickel!”
“Here you go again, hysterical. Souls at stake, instead of a failed relationship.”
“Out-of-control is so easy. You didn't make a conscious choice when you looked too closely at a woman and started noticing her perfume, and then took it further and talked to her. Touched her.”
“Gretchen, it isn't as if you don't do crazy things. You know you do when you drink.”
“I'm not proud of that. It's not who I really am.”
“You had to know eventually. I'm glad it's out.”
“I didn't want you to tell me. I wanted it to burn out. Now, you've told me, it's real.”
“She's just a place to go for now. It isn't what you think.”
“Should that make me feel better? That you didn't even fall in love with someone else? You left me for nothing?”
“I didn't say that…”
“Romance is fantasy, you know. You think there's a special woman out there for you when it really all amounts to the same thing, a woman, a sexual attraction, connection. Doesn't matter what woman. It might as well be me as her.”
“I need something different in my life.”
“Question,” Gretchen said. “If you don't love me, how do I feel about you?” She started crying, but really it was her leg killing her now. The dull pain sharpened and struck, and the long bone that had broken burned inside her leg like a molten sword. She took her other half pill with a piece of leftover bread, and pushed him away when he fluttered around her, looking angry. He hovered between her and the window, casting shadows on the bed.
On the other side of the curtain, a nurse announced that they had squeezed Katie in next for surgery. With much effort and many encouragements from her parents, a crew of family and hospital personnel helped her onto the gurney. They took her away. The room quieted for a moment.
“The squeaky wheel,” Craig said dismissively. “Wonder what other poor schmuck will have to wait while they fix her miserable, self-abused breast.” He walked to the foot of her bed and held the metal bar, looking at her. “If you'll get ready, we'll go. If not, I'm leaving.”
She knew he didn't mean it. “I need more water. One more, okay?”
He started over to the sink, but before he got there, two people arrived with armloads of fresh linens and began to make Katie's bed. Silently, he watched. After they left, Gretchen pulled back the curtain and watched him pour her water, then wash his hands.
“What a sordid little life. I guess those people were her parents. What losers,” he said, handing her the glass.
“How do you mean?”
“Smoked since she was ten. Where were they?” he asked. “Lots of teen piercings. Nipple rings.”
“She's an adult. She's twenty-one.”
“And free to act like any old adult fathead, apparently. They popped her out and gave up. Let her roll in the slop on the floor.”
“You don't know what they've been through with her. Maybe this is the best way. Maybe being forgiving, unconditional… people can do that, love unconditionally.”
“To hell with her pain. I'd have had her over my knee. I'd be ripping the damned ‘jewelry' out one by one.”
“I got something different,” Gretchen said, reaching into the bag for her clothes. She pulled the hospital gown down onto the floor and threw on a sweater.
“Oh? What did you get? That they're such good people because they let her ruin her life? Come on, you were as staggered as me about what a waste she is. She won't live to be thirty.”
“She seemed very young to me. Immature, and very, very desperate. She was hurting. The dad kept track of everything for her. He ran out to find help. The mother cuddled her because she needed that. They forgave her everything, every dumb thing she did.”
“They're irresponsible idiots. People like that should never be parents, and that girl had no business living, she was so screwed up.”
“How is it you're so responsible? Remind me. I forget.”
“My life is honest, at least. When I knew I had to change things, I told you.”
“You always overrated honesty. What matters isn't what you say, it's what you do. I don't think you're responsible at all. I think you depend on other people too much, and I think your ego gives you the idea you're running your life independently, when you don't. You need me. You always will. You've got to face that before you can understand real love.” Gretchen pulled on her underpants carefully, up and over her injured leg. He came over to help her with her sweatpants.
“No.”
“That looks awkward. Let me help.”
“You'll push too fast and it will hurt. Please don't. Leave it.”
“I'll be careful.”
“No!”
He stared at her.
“I'm too pissed now. I don't want you to touch me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I can see we're going nowhere. It's like you said, this isn't a negotiation, and you're not changing your mind without leaving here tonight. You won't let go of her and come back to me yet, which is what you should do. So do something else for me.”
“What?”
“Go, Craig.”
“I'll take you home. I said I would.”
“I don't want you here right now. You need to grow up. See what's in front of your face. That she's not real. I am real, and I am here for you when you figure that out.”
He loved the idea; she saw it in his eyes, but the well-trained gentleman in him rose to the occasion, offering up token arguments which she easily dismissed.
“How will you get home?” he said, finally giving in.
“Don't worry. I can take care of it.”
“It's very… generous of you, Gretchen.”
“No, it isn't. It's pure selfishness.” She was adamant, and he was eager to get back to his new lover. He left, cell phone open, finger punching away.
Katie's mother came back into the room looking vaguely around. “Forgot her apple juice,” she said, checking under the sheets. She finally found what she was looking for on the counter beside the sink. “She loves apple juice.”
Well, Mom did seem a little on the dim side, Gretchen decided. Nobody left apple juice in bed.
But she sure loved her wayward, screwed-up daughter.
Gretchen swung her leg over the side of the bed and pressed the red button to summon a nurse. Somebody needed to get her a wheelchair, to push her out to the curb. By the time she got home tonight, Craig would have gone to Julie's apartment.
What would Craig do when Julie didn't answer her door? Probably the same thing he had done all evening with the cell phone. He would try and try again. At some point, maybe days down the line, he would get it through his thick skull that Julie was gone.
She hadn't been hard to take care of. Soft, not a suitable match for Craig, Julie wasn't someone with the strength to prop him up. She was certainly no match for Gretchen.
Gretchen had followed her and Craig on Friday night. They went to a restaurant, the restaurant where Gretchen and Craig always used to eat together. Now Gretchen couldn't go there anymore. She would be too embarrassed for their waiter, Harold, to witness her humiliation.
To Gretchen's surprise, Craig hadn't gone home with Julie. At least he had told the truth about that. He left her at the doorway to her building. They kissed while Gretchen watched. Then she followed his new woman all the way back into the dinky, dark apartment house. Gretchen knocked on the door and Julie answered.
Flimsy, insubstantial person. Gretchen would have known better. She had all night to finish, because she and Craig had fought earlier about her drinking. She had stomped off to stay at her mother's, supposedly. Julie's kitchen was full of things Gretchen knew how to use, even if she didn't usually use them.
That Saturday night dancing with Craig, she had seen the specter of Julie coming toward her in his eyes even though she knew it was impossible, that Julie was gone, but with that traveling car wreck of a thought, she had fallen. In that moment, she had succumbed to fear and weakness, and this was her punishment. She accepted it. She took responsibility. She didn't have to like it: visible injury. Weeks of disability. So she learned her lesson. You take control; you accept consequences.
Would he come back begging? Or would he waste a lot of time searching for Julie first?
Maybe he would call the police.
But they would never find her. No one would ever find her. Julie, as it turned out, was a clean freak. She had more bleach stowed below her kitchen sink than a hospital. And Gretchen, messy in her own life, knew how to clean, she just didn't like it much.
He had no one else. She had also spoken the truth when she said he wouldn't have had the courage to leave Gretchen without someone waiting in the wings to substitute. He needed a woman to anchor him. He would be unhappy without one.
Gretchen would think some more on unconditional love and forgiveness. She would forgive him his infidelity, and he would have to forgive her, too. Maybe she would tell him someday exactly what she had done with Julie when things were settled, after she was pregnant and he was happy with the outcome of unveiling all these secrets, even if he didn't much like knowing them. Well, she didn't, either.
She made a mental note that he would have to take some parenting classes before the big event. He didn't seem to understand that you have to let people be who they are and love them anyway. You forgive them their piercings, their abscesses, their strayings, their excesses, their lack of control. You love them anyway, with your whole heart.
She leaned over to use the bedside phone. She punched in a nine and then the number.
“Mom?” she said. “I need your help.”