I Will Never Leave You Page 4

  I slip my finger into Zerena’s little palm. Instinctually, her fingers clasp around mine, and like that, as if she flipped the switch to my heart, I’m flooded with this sense of devotion to her. I didn’t expect this to happen so fast. My free hand rests on the back of her head, supporting her. Her skin is so soft, so warm. Only hours ago, she was a melon-sized question nestled in my uterus, someone I’d seen only through smudgy sonogram pictures. This is our first time alone together. Her fingers are so small, and yet her grip is firm, as if she never wants to let go of me. I don’t want to let go of her either. I’ll be a good mother. I’ll teach her to be good, but not so good that she won’t be able to stand up for herself.

  Tricia trots back into the room with a middle-aged woman in tow. As soon as Tricia sees me nursing, she freezes. A polite woman, barging in on another woman with a newborn on her breast, would excuse herself and leave, but Tricia stands there, stricken, her fingers over her lips, a longing gaze in her eyes. The other woman, short and graying and wearing a white hospital uniform, comes at me with a smile on her face. She, too, ought to turn around, but she slips her hand over mine on the back of Zerena’s head and gently adjusts the angle at which I hold her to my chest.

  “Do it like that, so her mouth is straight over you,” the other woman says, smiling with an air of talcum powder and happiness. “I’m Lois Belcher, by the way, the lactation consultant here at the hospital. Your mother had a nurse fetch me. She said you were having trouble getting a handle on breastfeeding, but frankly, it looks like you’re doing everything right.”

  “My mother?” I stare at Tricia, aghast. She cringes like a chastised poodle.

  The lactation consultant adjusts my fingers over Zerena’s head and instructs me to shift her to my other breast—“To even things out,” she says, offering the kind of practical breastfeeding advice most new moms probably receive from their own mothers. In a fit of panic and worried I’d need my mother’s help, I called my parents a week ago for the first time in over eight years. They thought I was still in Vermont, didn’t even realize I’d already graduated from college. When I mentioned I was pregnant and about to give birth, my father responded that there was no way—no way!—I could move back home again. As if. Last night, when my water broke, I called them again. They said they’d meet me at the hospital. I haven’t heard from them since, which isn’t surprising, since my parents happen to be about the sorriest critters imaginable.

  The lactation consultant, seeing I’ve got the breastfeeding thing under control, leaves the room. I wish Tricia would leave too. She’s still standing against the wall, utterly rapt and creeping me out. I’m topless, and she stares at me and Zerena, unable to take her eyes off us. She’s jealous. She wishes she were me, young and blessed with a newborn girl. I’ve tried not to think of the pain I’ve caused her because there’s nothing I can do about it now. I need to take care of Zerena. I don’t want her to end up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop, which is what will happen if Jimmy ups and leaves us for Trish.

  “So you were a liberal arts major, were you? At Ethan Allen College. Right?” Tricia asks, sitting down on the padded brown recliner next to my bed.

  Warily, I nod. I’m not sure how she knows this. She peppers me with more questions about my college degree, engaging me in small talk, but it’s unsettling how much she knows about my classes, my grades. It’s like she’s memorized my whole transcript.

  “So along with your liberal arts diploma, you earned a certificate in gender studies. What’s that for?” Tricia asks. A thin snide smile spreads over her lips. “Has that been useful in your career search?”

  Unlike everything else she’s mentioned, this statement about me having a gender studies certificate is flat-out wrong. “I don’t have a gender studies certificate.”

  The look she gives me is of a cat that’s just had a whisker yanked off. “You don’t? Are you sure about that?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t go through five years of college just to amnesia out on everything. Women’s studies. That’s my certificate.”

  “Women’s studies,” Tricia says, as if committing it to memory, but even after she says this three times, her initial mistake still troubles her. I earned the women’s studies certificate in part by counseling teenage girls on how to develop greater self-esteem so they won’t be easily victimized or exploited.

  Tricia bounds up from the recliner and puts her hand on the window. The sun’s already beginning to set, but something catches her attention. “I’m going to have to call for a cab.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She points to something in the parking lot outside the window. “James must’ve forgot he promised to take me home. He just hopped into his car and is driving toward one of the exits.”

  “He is?” Jimmy had promised to sleep this evening on the recliner in my maternity suite. Zerena was going to be with us, sleeping in her stainless steel hospital bassinet. It was going to be the first time we would have spent an entire night all together—baby’s first night! We had talked about this, chosen an extradeluxe maternity room just so we could be together for the occasion.

  “What’s the matter?” Tricia asks, fumbling through her handbag for her cell phone.

  I tell Tricia about the plans we made. James knows how meaningful I wanted this to be for us. “We were going to spend the baby’s first night all together. The three of us. That’s what I told Jimmy I wanted us to do.” Disappointment is making me tell her all this. I’m so distraught that I can’t stop myself from talking. It’s what I do sometimes: blab. Listening to me, Tricia softens her expression. A look of genuine sadness falls over her. She touches my hand, shakes her head in commiseration, but then, as though she apparently remembers she considers me dirt, her snide smile reappears, making me feel worse.

  “Actually, I’m glad James isn’t around right now,” Tricia says. She picks up her pink cashmere cape from the back of a chair and drapes it over her shoulders. “This extra time’s allowed you and me and Anne Elise to get to know each other. Hasn’t it been fun?”

  “Her name’s not Anne Elise,” I say, clearing my throat. “It’s Zerena. Or, at least, it’s going to be Zerena.”

  Tricia tilts her head, narrows her eyes. “But I thought James said—”

  “I know what Jimmy said. And I know his reasons.” The one thing life’s taught me is that you can’t let anyone push you around. Though he signed the birth certificate listing Anne Elise as the official name, I’m guessing ways exist to amend the filing. I’ve never had the chance to name anything in my life—not even a goldfish or a stray cat—and I’m sure not going to let anyone name my daughter for me. “Let me tell you: Jimmy and me are going to have more discussions about this.”

  Tricia eyes me for several moments, and I sense her begrudging respect for digging in my heels on this. She calls the taxi company, tells them to meet her at the hospital lobby in five minutes. When she’s through with her call, she turns back toward me. “Can I give you one piece of advice? From my own experience?”

  I nod.

  “Next time, if you’re going to make plans with James, prepare yourself to be disappointed,” Tricia says, patting the top of my head with an unnerving condescension that makes me want to smack her down, but then the knowledge of how to truly hurt Tricia comes over me.

  “It could be worse,” I say.

  “How?”

  “Tonight, I’ll be snug and comfy in this bed and breastfeeding my darling little girl. You? You’ll still be old and alone. You tell me what’s worse.”

  Tricia gasps, stung. I fear she’s going to slap me—or worse—which would be great because I know I can take her in any brawl. Instead, though, she stalks toward the door, but before she leaves, she spins around, her cheeks red and angry. “You’ve made the worst mistake you could ever make.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Why?” Tricia laughs a deranged laugh. “A woman with a vendetta and lots of mon
ey can cause great harm. That’s why.”

  Chapter Five

  JIM

  Ten hours have passed since I left Trish and Laurel at the hospital. For much of that time, I’d been ensconced on a barstool tipping back tumblers of Scotch with a farm belt commodities insider who, upon hearing I’d just become a father, gifted me the investment tip of a lifetime. Fatherhood and a lucrative investment tip have fallen into my lap on the same day, but my life’s a train wreck. I’m a congenial portfolio management specialist offering investment advice to the most risk-averse clientele you’d ever hope to ring up on speed dial. I’m not a genius, but I’m smart enough to know that one way or another, I’m going to pay for what I’ve done.

  I’m standing on the front porch of Trish’s house, Savory Mew, debating what to do. Located in the same Georgetown neighborhood as Dumbarton Oaks, the historic mansion where delegates from five nations hatched out plans to create the United Nations, the house has belonged to her family for four generations. And it’s gorgeous, an ostentatious twelve-room Georgian brick manor house with a portico entrance, lead glass windows, molded ceilings, a tall slate roof, and the kind of storied past that lends itself to magazine feature stories. How can one walk away from such a home?

  I fumble through my pockets for my house key, thankful Trish hasn’t changed the locks on me yet. The house is dark. Trish must be asleep, meaning that for the moment I’ll avoid the horrendous argument I know we’re going to have in the not-too-distant future. I’m in it over my head with Trish and Laurel. There’s a black stain on my conscience, a growing guilt that’s getting harder to suppress, a sorrow that consumes me nightly before I drift off to sleep. I’ve got no good way of making right this situation. What does one do when one’s screwed up as bad as I have? I let Trish down. I should never have stumbled into an affair, but in the months after Jack Riggs served up the idea of surrogacy, the idea that another woman might bear me a child gnawed on me. Having felt the sting of abandonment myself while growing up, I can’t just walk out on Trish. Or Laurel. Or my newborn daughter.

  At the hospital, I wanted Trish to yell at me, scream and shout, tell me how horrible I am. Last week, Laurel said she’d make sure I’d play no role in our baby’s life if I didn’t divorce Trish. A baby needs a daddy. I can’t risk Laurel taking our baby away from me. I knew Trish would never divorce me because of the financial implications, but I needed to show Laurel I was doing what I could. Trish was going to find out about Laurel soon enough even if I didn’t bring her to the hospital. Laurel’s been tightening the screws on me to be done with Trish ASAP. Lately, she’s been threatening to mail photographs of us together to Trish as a means of hastening our separation. Although I do wonder how Trish found out about Laurel, I was almost relieved when she told me on our drive to the hospital that she knew, because it meant I no longer had to live with that secret hanging over my head.

  As strange as it sounds, I don’t want Trish to eject me from her life. She’s not the easiest person to be married to, but I love her. I really do. She’s erratic, often acting on rash impulses or a logic that’s near impossible to divine. At times, I’ve worried about her mental health, but I’ve not been able to convince her to see a psychologist. Like every other wealthy person I’ve met, she’s uncommonly stubborn. Once she latches on to an idea, regardless how ridiculous or demonstrably false it may be, she’ll never shake it out of her head. But I love her.

  “James? Is that you?” Trish calls downstairs from the bedroom. “Are you home for the night?”

  The question silences me.

  Trish pads down the stairs, and in the dark, she sniffs the air, searching for me. Though I can’t see her, I can tell she’s cross at me by how she taps her foot on the marble floor.

  “James. Have you been drinking?”

  “Not drinking,” I say, trying to put the best foot forward. “Contemplating.”

  Flipping on the light, I stumble forward and wrap my arms around Trish. She stands at the base of the grand staircase in her full-length cherry-blossom-print pink kimono. She used to cook incredible dinners: hollandaise sauce that was to die for, herbed lamb roasts, fresh-baked croissants. Every meal was spectacular. Years ago, upon arriving home, I’d grab her hand and twirl her around on the pink marble floors as if we were ballroom dancers. As newlyweds, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Through her, a brand-new world opened up for me, a moneyed extravaganza I never quite believed actually existed beyond the pages of Vanity Fair and the Washingtonian.

  Coming from a long line of bankers, Trish’s father served in Nixon’s Treasury Department and, thereafter, in executive positions with the bank that bore his family name and controlled the commerce of this capital city for generations. Trish and her twin sister, Julie, seventeen years deceased due to a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm, were named after Nixon’s daughters. An oil portrait of her father hangs above the fireplace in the living room. He was a dapper man who strolled the city with a silver-handled walking stick and top hat long after it had been fashionable to do so, and through these Gilded Age eccentricities and his financial muscle, he carved out a revered position for himself in Washington’s social milieu. He possessed a patrician’s jaunty chin, discerning eyes, and a smooth, chiseled, haughty nose. All children bear the scars and blessings of their parents. Sometimes, I doubt Trish realizes how much she resembles her father.

  Growing up, I was never in Trish’s league. Extravagance for me used to mean nothing grander than an extra scoop of ice cream or a new winter coat at Christmastime. But as a young man, in college, I fell under the thrall of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Like all strivers, I took the novel to heart, appreciating it as a manual for how to get ahead in life rather than for its substantial literary merits. Having grown up in Buffalo (coincidentally, the city where Fitzgerald spent much of his early years), I snagged a half scholarship to a private DC university that billed itself as “the Harvard on the Potomac.” I wanted to be rich. I was a Gatsby-in-training, an aspiring parvenu, a man on the make. Through Fitzgerald, I learned all men of consequence were either on the make, like Gatsby and myself, or, like Tom Buchanan, wealthy but careless people who relied on others to clean up their messes. A frequent though private game of mine was to walk into a party and assess everyone in the room—were they Gatsbys or Buchanans? Even before I met Jack Riggs, I pegged him, rightly, as a Buchanan. And he probably knew I was a Gatsby.

  “I don’t care if you were out ‘contemplating.’ Or whatever it was that you were doing. You shouldn’t be driving after you’ve been drinking.” Trish takes another exaggerated sniff of my alcohol-soused breath and flutters her hand, clearing the air of the odor. “Why don’t you go to bed and sleep off whatever you’ve been ‘contemplating’?”

  “Did I ever tell you why I love you?”

  Trish tilts her head, her eyes narrowing as if she’s wary of being outsmarted. “Why?”

  “Darling, I love the way you care for me. Even if I arrive at your staircase less than sober, you are compassionate and kind, gentle and sweet,” I say, hoping against hope that a few generous compliments might temporarily erase the sins of my inebriation. “Beautiful. Silky. Sexy. You’re everything a man could want in a wife.”

  Trish flicks the back of her hand at me, catching me on the shoulder. “You’re impossible.”

  I kiss Trish’s dry lips, trying to amuse her, but she leans away from my kisses, arching her back against the hand-carved wooden pineapple adorning the head of the staircase newel post.

  “Hey? What gives?”

  “Tomorrow. When you’re sober. We’re going to have a talk.”

  I turn away from Trish, glance once more at the portrait of her father above the mantel. It’s strange how you can look at one thing and see another. Every time I look at that painting, I wonder what kind of home run he was trying to hit, naming his daughters after those of a disgraced president. Was he banking on Nixon returning to power? Was he trying to impress whatever Nixon admirers
hadn’t been booted out of office by the time Julie and Trish were born in 1975? Or was he naturally Nixonian, a cynical beast fully on board with Nixon’s “screw my enemies” mentality?

  Nixon once erroneously proclaimed, “I am not a crook.” Technicalities and plausible deniability being the mother of all reckless assertions, I could say the same: I am not a crook, for my shenanigans are so far beneath the radar that no one but Trish cares about them. Although I’ve guided my financial clients into solid if conservative portfolios, I’ve been far more reckless with my own personal investments. And far less successful. I’ve lost staggering amounts of money. To impress Laurel, I booked us into $1,000-a-night hotel suites for our assignations. French doors opened out onto private balconies that overlooked the White House, the Potomac, the C&O Canal, and the national monuments scattered throughout town. I booked dozens of these hotel suites in the months we’ve been seeing each other. Now my credit cards are significantly overdrawn.

  “Honey?” I say, leaning back against the wall until I feel the flocked wallpaper on the back of my neck. “Honey, if I told you how confused I am, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “I’d believe you,” Trish says, slipping her hand into mine. “You’re not the only one who’s confused.”

  We stand like this for several minutes. Everything’s quiet save for the occasional car on the cobblestone street in front of our house and the tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the next room. Moonlight shines in through the windows, its silvery light changing as clouds ebb and flow over the sky.

  “Do you want to talk about this now?” Trish asks.

  “No. Please. I’m in no shape to say anything sensible right now,” I answer, slumping down against the wall.

  Months after I met Trish, I received a phone call from her father, Jack Riggs, inviting me to lunch. I arrived at Savory Mew at the appointed hour expecting her to be present, but opening the door, Jack informed me she was away with friends. “Let’s get to know each other,” he said, decanting port wine for us into a pair of cut crystal glasses. I’d been to Savory Mew often enough that the house no longer intimidated me, yet on this occasion, alone with Jack Riggs, the blinds drawn, I realized an interrogation awaited me. Lunch was the stated purpose of my visit, but food was nowhere in sight. He offered me a cigar, which I declined.