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“Now?”
“Come on.” He grips my wrist, pulling me back to him. “Right now. Let’s do it.”
“No,” I almost growl. And this time I shove him. Hard.
Ollie’s eyes widen. At first he looks rejected, even annoyed, but then he’s contrite. “I’m sorry, babe. You just look so hot, and...”
Now it’s my turn to feel guilty. “No,I’msorry.” I can feel the tears gathering in my throat. “I just... I’m a mess today, you know? My head is all over the place.”
“I know.” He runs his hands over the back of his neck. “But at that funeral, knowing that someone our age is dead—it made me think about how fleeting life is. How we have to seize it by the horns, and I love you so much. You know that, right? I love yousomuch.”
I can only eke a nod. I am the worst person on earth.
We sink into the love seat. I let Ollie stroke my forearm. I keep my head down, feeling as though a heavy bag is pressed against my shoulders. Maybe I’ve made a mistake, pushing him away. Things feel so precarious, on the verge of being exposed. Ollie can’tknowanything, can he?
But the way he said,Let’s make another baby.If only it were that simple.
After the mistake of a night with Greg, I vowed to change. I was careful around him. Polite, but distant. Two weeks after it happened, he asked me into his office. He closed the door. We went over the details of a patient, and he put his hand on my knee. I drew back. “No?” Greg cocked his head playfully.
“No,” I said firmly. My attraction for Greg had evaporated; he’d fucked it out of me, maybe. Since then, I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. My whole life, I’d held myself to certain standards, but now I felt my reputation was soiled, even if I was the only person who’d ever know.
Greg’s eyes were pleading. “But you get me, Laura. And I get you, too.”
Not long ago, I would have been flattered. Thrilled. But I shook my head. “We’re better than this,” I said quietly. “We’re bothgood people.”
Greg drew back as though I’d slapped him. “Well,” he said, crossing his arms. “I guess I have my marching orders.” And then he dismissed me.
My period was due right around then. It was the only thing I could rely on being regular in my life, and yet the days kept passing, and it didn’t come. I stared at the calendar, first puzzled, and then apprehensive. Two weeks went by. At that point, I was starting to feel nauseous, and my breasts were tender, and I felt strange, pulling sensations in my lower abdomen. I wasn’t surprised when two lines came up on the test I took in the pharmacy bathroom three minutes after purchasing it. I stared at the little plastic stick, feeling nothing—not hope, not doom. It was fucking ironic.
Here was the thing, though: Yes, I’d cheated with Greg, and yes, the sex hadn’t been protected, but Ollie and I had also tried plenty that month. It wasn’t out of the question that thiswasOllie’s baby. Maybe we’d finally conceived. Maybe the Greg dalliance had nothing to do with anything.
I pocketed the pregnancy test. Steered my attitude toward something light and bright and joyful. It wasn’t hard to get excited—reallyexcited. I waspregnant,something I’d wished for forever. Ollie and I would finally get what we deserved. I told him that very night, casually dropping the test next to his plate at dinner. He stared at it long and hard, and then looked at me questioningly, almost worriedly, like he was afraid he was dreaming and would soon wake up. But I grinned. “It’s happening! Really happening!”
A strange sort of whoop emerged from the back of his throat as he rose and hugged me hard. His shoulders shook with sobs. I cried, too, though my tears weren’t any one pure emotion. It wouldn’t be easy to erase the possibility of Greg from my mind. Years before, I’d heard a heart transplant patient use the termbrutiful—a mash-up ofbrutalandbeautiful,indicating an experience that was difficult but memorable and came with a certain amount of grace. That’s how I felt: both brutal and beautiful. Thrilled and devastated at the same time.
The pregnancy stuck. I got through my first trimester with no complications. Eventually, I had to tell Greg the news. Nerves rippled through me like water through a sieve. Since I’d turned Gregdown in his office, we’d avoided one another. If we were working the same surgeries, we were cordial, but there was no casual banter like before. I’d also noticed him in the hallway sometimes, typing on his phone, a wisp of a smile on his face. A new woman? Perhaps his wife? In hindsight, I wonder if it was that Lolita person.
In his office, I stared at the crystal paperweights on his bookshelf so I wouldn’t have to look at him directly. “So I’m pregnant,” I blurted. “Due October third.”
“October third,” Greg repeated, but there was a kink in his voice, like he was counting backward. A memory of Greg at the bar popped in my mind, all sharp edges:I wish I’d had a biological child.Sadness had wafted off him. Yearning.
“Ollie and I are really excited,” I said. Because I had to. I needed to draw lines around this baby. Ascribe whom it belonged to.
“I’m sure you are,” Greg said. And just like that, his eyes crinkled mirthfully. He opened his arms. I walked into a strange, tentative hug. A happy ending, then.
Until it wasn’t.
By the time I went into labor, I barely remembered my worries about Greg. But when Freddie was born and the nurses placed him on my belly, his little eyes screwed tight, his big mouth stretched wide, I took one look at him and knew. Thank God Ollie’s back was turned—he was washing his hands at the sink—there was no way I could hide my dismay. I’d heard that babies look like their fathers when they’re born for biologically imperative reasons: It’s so dads will see themselves in those new, tiny faces and feel compelled to protect them. The only face I saw in Freddie’s squished little features was the face of the doctor I worked alongside in the operating room, not the husband who slept next to me every night. Not the man who yearned for this child as deeply as I did.
When Ollie turned and saw me crying, he assumed it was out of joy—our baby was finally here, healthy and strong. I did feel that. But I was also bitterly angry—and afraid of what Ollie mightsuspect. But Ollie held Freddie outstretched, marveling at his existence. When his mother arrived and declared that the baby was the spitting image of Ollie’s deceased father, Joe, I began to breathe easier.
Still.Iknew. I kept Greg from seeing Freddie for as long as I could. But just a few weeks ago, on one of my days off, I needed to pick up my paycheck, so I popped into the hospital with Freddie. Greg wouldn’t be there—I was so paranoid about running into him that I knew his schedule better than my own. The nurses flocked around us, commenting on the baby’s chubby cheeks, his bright blue eyes, his sweet disposition, the milestones he’d already achieved.
And then I sensed a presence in the doorway. My blood ran cold. When Greg clapped eyes on Freddie, it was as though he was hit with an electric current. “So,” he said, “I finally get to meet the big man.”
I tried to act like things were normal. But I felt a horrible twist in my gut at how recognizable my son’s features were. Freddie had the same little bump on his nose that Greg did. The same long eyelashes. That same cleft in his chin. Greg could see himself in Freddie, and it was like a switch had flipped inside him. A rope had snapped.
I got out of the hospital quickly, unable to stand Greg’s charged stare. But during my next shift, I found a folded piece of paper in my locker. It was a printout reminding new mothers to give their baby vitamin D drops. I stared at it for a few long beats, confused. Maybe Tina had slipped it in there? She was crazy about vitamins. But when I asked her, she looked at me like I was crazy. “I’m not going to tell you how to raise your kid.”
