When we bought the house, Eric told me to save my share of the down payment "for when we have a baby." Logistically, I couldn't manage a tenth of it, let alone half. I'd worried-a little, anyway-at the time, wanting a more modest house, but Eric had smiled, kissed me and said, "Honey, we can easily afford this."
By which he'd meant I can easily afford this.
Otherwise, I never thought much about money. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The name on the deed...only his. We'd never changed that, had we? Had that been deliberate? My God, had he done that on purpose?
I never once questioned that it was our money, our house, our families.
Once or twice a year, I'd wrestle Eric for the check and say, "This one's on me," and we'd laugh, and he'd let me pay.
I realized I was sweating.
I did have my own savings account, which I checked now. The balance was the same as last week: $12,289.43. Not a lot to show for a decade of work.
My heart should probably be broken, or I should be furious, but right now all I felt was numb.
He didn't mean this. A day or week from now, he'd be on his knees, begging me to forgive him. He loved me. He had always loved me.
But there was a voice in my head that sounded a lot like Candy's, and it was saying Eric was doing exactly what he wanted to do.
Chapter Ten
Kate
On the twenty-second day of My Exciting Adventures as a Widow, I found myself in a gas station bathroom, peeing on a stick.
Why? Because I was fun, that's why.
Still no period.
So I had to be knocked up, right? Right?
I recognized my own desperation. Eleven pregnancy tests had told me I wasn't pregnant. I opted not to believe them. Fuck 'em! So what if the Mayo Clinic, WebMD and the National Health Service of Great Britain said they were 99 percent accurate? If that was true, I'd have my period, so clearly, I was pregnant.
"I am going to have your baby, Nathan," I said aloud, setting the test on the sink to do its thing. My voice bounced off the tiles on the bathroom walls. "You and I are going to be parents, honey!"
Keep on the sunny side, right? That was me! Widowed but not broken.
Why the gas station? Well, let's just say I was tired of irrationally hiding my used pregnancy tests at home. Having to do jazz hands to keep the lights on took away from what should be a special moment. Also, what if Brooke stopped over, unannounced, as she was prone to doing these days, and rifled through my trash (which she hadn't done, but still, it was possible) and found a pregnancy test, and her hopes got so high, and then I had to dash them?
What if my mother-in-law (was Eloise still my mother-in-law, since I was technically no longer married?)...anyway, what if Eloise brought her little dogs over, and they ran into the bathroom and grabbed one out of the trash and ran out and dropped it at her feet, the same way my childhood dog had barfed up a tampon in front of my first boyfriend?
I'd run out of pregnancy tests two days ago, so I had to go to the CVS three towns north (in case I ran into someone who knew Nathan, and their name was legion). The CVS was conveniently located next to a gas station.
And really, the two lines were much more likely to show up here. Right? Wouldn't this make a great scene in a movie? It was all so...grimy. If I was a teenager, I'd definitely be pregnant.
I had to be pregnant. I had never once missed my period, which had been such a faithful pain in the ass since it had first debuted when I was twelve during my great-aunt Marguerite's one hundredth birthday party. "I see your Cousin Tilly from St. Louis has come to visit," Marguerite whispered in my ear.
I thought she was having a stroke. Turned out I had a big splotch of blood on the ass of my white (of course) sundress. Ainsley thought I was dying and had been inconsolable.
And since then, every friggin' twenty-eight days.
So where was my period, huh? Making a placenta, that was where.
"Placenta," I said out loud, just to make sure I wasn't in some weird dream. The difference was very hard to tell. I was drunk with exhaustion.
Since Nathan's death, I'd slept only in twenty-minute spurts, jerking awake in a panic. Was it true? Was he really gone? Or had I dreamed his whole death thing? Or maybe our whole life was the dream, those nine bizarrely idyllic months just an incredibly vivid product of my imagination.
Already, our marriage felt like it was dissolving. I could picture Nathan only in shimmery waves, as if I was looking at him across a hot parking lot in August. I could picture a photo of him, but not him in real life.
"Please come back," I whispered. "Please, Nathan."
There was no answer.
I glanced at my watch. In twenty minutes, I was meeting Eloise at the Cambry-on-Hudson Lawn Club for lunch. We were now shackled together in grief, she and I. This would be my first public outing aside from that trip to the supermarket, three late-night drives and today's fun-fun-fun outing to CVS.
Twenty minutes. Plenty of time for my hormones to create the appropriate lines on the pregnancy test. I wouldn't tell Eloise that I'm pregnant until I was well out of the first trimester, when the pregnancy was more assured. And then, oh, what happy news it would be!
I picked up the test.
One line.
"Well, fuck you, shit-bird," I said and threw it in the trash as hard as I could.
* * *
"Kate, my deah," Eloise said as I came into the club. "Thank you for joining me."
"Thank you for inviting me." I went to kiss her just as she hugged me instead, so the end result was that I kissed my mother-in-law on the neck, like a teenage boy going in for a hickey. She kindly ignored it but did step back a little. I couldn't blame her. Looking down, I saw that my shoes didn't match. Classy. I tried to hide this fact by standing with one foot behind the other, like a tightrope walker.
Looking Eloise in the eye was just too hard. Though I wasn't a mother (thanks for nothing, pregnancy test), it seemed to me that suicide might feel like a very reasonable option if your child died. Then again, Eloise had Brooke and Brooke's sons. And Nathan Senior.
"Right this way, Mrs. Coburn, Mrs. Coburn," the maître d' said.
Technically, I wasn't Mrs. Coburn. Four months ago, changing my name had felt awkward and pretentious, as if I'd be flaunting my married status. Now I wished I had.
I followed Les or Stu or Cal-I knew his name had three letters in it-to a table by the window.
"Please let me say how very sorry I was to hear about young Mr. Coburn," he said.
"Thank you, Bob," Eloise said. Bob. That was it. "You're very kind."
"Yes. Thank you," I added.
"I remember his sixteenth birthday party here, when he-" Bob's voice broke off.
I swallowed. Everyone knew him. Better than I did, in many cases. Everyone had more memories. And rather than comfort me, these stories made me jealous and confused. What do you mean, you played poker with him? He never played poker! Not in the whole nine months I knew him! I wanted to bark. Or, Who gives a rat's ass that he got you through algebra? He was my husband, and he's dead!
"That was a happy day," Eloise said, graciously covering for poor Bob, who was struggling to maintain control. He gruffly assured us that our waiter would be right over and left the table.
Unable to avoid it any longer, Eloise and I looked at each other.
"So how are you?" I asked, my words squeaking, crushed by the vise in my throat.
"I'm doing as well as can be expected."
She looked good, that was for sure. Tall and slender, her thick blond-gray hair cut in a bob, Eloise was the type of woman who didn't own jeans or Keds. She wore a beige dress with a matching jacket and low heels. Very stylish, very flattering.
What was I wearing? I didn't remember, so I glanced down. Linen pants (points for that), a white shirt with a faint stain of spaghetti sauce. That's right. The meatball stain from a night at Porto's. A stain that predated Nathan.
"And how are you, Kate?" Eloise asked.
My stomach chose this moment to growl. Loud and long, too, thunder rolling across the plains. "Hungry, I guess." I laughed.
Whoops. No laughing allowed. My husband was dead. Her son. The laughter stopped.
Eloise's face didn't change. She gave a small nod.
"Sorry," I whispered. I looked away.
"Have you gotten back to work yet?" she asked, folding her hands.
"Not yet," I said. "I had a wedding this past weekend, but my assistant covered it. Max. You met him, I think."
"Yes. A nice man."
"Yes." Another stomach growl. We both ignored it this time.
The waiter came over. "I'll have a martini, three olives, very dry," I said, even though it was only 1:12 in the afternoon. But wait! I might be pregnant. "Actually, just water. And a Caesar salad, and the filet mignon." Because the baby would need iron and stuff. Until Cousin Tilly from St. Louis came to visit, I was pregnant, goddamn it.