Chương 2
"Then what way should I be thinking?"
She said nothing.
I laughed once, a short ugly sound that made the woman on the bench glance at us again.
"Unbelievable."
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Turn me into somebody you already decided I am."
"I don't even know who you are right now."
Her eyes flashed.
"That's convenient."
There she was.
The Alina I knew.
Not calm, not distant, not transformed by seven months of secrets, but angry enough to stop protecting me from herself.
"You left our house on February third," she said.
"I know when I left."
"You came back February seventeenth."
My mouth went dry.
I remembered.
Of course I remembered.
I had gone back because a pipe beneath the kitchen sink was leaking and Alina couldn't get the shutoff valve to turn.
At least that was the reason I had given myself.
I fixed the pipe.
She ordered Thai food because neither of us had eaten.
We sat at opposite ends of the kitchen table and talked about the dog we had lost the previous summer, then about my mother, then about nothing.
At some point she opened a bottle of wine.
At some point I stopped pretending I needed to leave.
I slept beside my wife in our bed for the first time in almost three months.
In the morning, I woke before her.
Her hand was resting against my chest.
I lay there for perhaps a minute before lifting it carefully away.
I had dressed in the dark and left without breakfast.
She called my name from the top of the stairs as I reached the front door.
I told her I was late.
I never asked what she had wanted to say.
Now she stood in front of me carrying the answer.
"February seventeenth," I said.
"Yes."
"That's..."
"Thirty-one weeks ago."
I looked at her stomach.
Something moved beneath her coat.
It was small, just a shifting of fabric, but Alina immediately placed her palm there.
My knees went strangely weak.
"Was that the baby?"
Her expression changed again.
"Yes."
I stepped back until the bench touched the backs of my legs.
The woman who had been sitting there decided she had heard enough of our lives and stood.
She walked away without meeting either of our eyes.
I sat down.
Alina remained standing.
"Why didn't you call me?"
"I did."
"No, you didn't."
"I called you the day I took the first test."
I pulled out my phone as though a call from seven months ago might still be glowing on the screen.
"You didn't tell me."
"You didn't answer."
"You could have left a message."
"I did."
My hand stopped.
"What message?"
"The one asking you to call me."
"That could have meant anything."
"Yes."
"Alina, if you knew you were pregnant, you don't leave a message saying call me."
"I didn't know yet."
"You just said it was the day you took the test."
"I took it after I called you."
The distinction irritated me because it made sense.
"Then you call again."
"I did."
I searched my memory and found nothing I trusted.
Those first weeks after leaving had been a blur of work, motel rooms, my brother's guest bedroom, and the humiliating practical work of separating a shared life.
There had been calls from Alina.
Some I answered.
Some I ignored because every conversation turned into an argument about whether we were making a mistake.
Some she probably stopped making because I stopped answering.
"You could have texted me."
"I started to."
"Started?"
"I wrote it."
"And?"
"And I deleted it."
I stared at her.
"Why?"
"Because the last message you'd sent me said you wanted all communication to go through the lawyers."
I remembered that one.
I wished I didn't.
It had come after a fight about the house.
Alina had called me at work, and I had stepped into the parking garage because I didn't want anyone hearing us.
She accused me of treating fourteen years like a failed business arrangement.
I told her that every conversation with her became emotional and nothing got solved.
She said, "God forbid your divorce inconvenience your afternoon."
I hung up.
Ten minutes later, still furious, I sent the message.
From now on, let's keep everything through counsel.
Clean.
Efficient.
Cowardly.
"That didn't mean this."
"You didn't include exceptions."
"Because I didn't know I needed to."
"Neither did I."
I stood again.
"So what happened?"
"After?"
"Yes, after."
She folded the tissue smaller.
"I went to the doctor."
"Alone?"
"At first."
The answer bothered me for reasons I couldn't defend.
"Who went with you later?"
Her fingers stopped moving.
There it was.
A hesitation.
Tiny.
But after fourteen years, I knew her hesitations better than most people knew entire conversations.
"Who?"
"My sister went to some appointments."
"Some?"
"Marcus."
"Who went to the others?"
She looked at me, and the fear returned.
"There is something I need to tell you."
A door opened farther down the hallway, and a little boy came running out before his father caught him by the hood of his sweatshirt.
The boy laughed.
His father whispered an apology to a security officer and carried him toward the elevator.
I watched them until the doors closed.
Then I looked back at my wife.
"Tell me now."
Alina sat beside me, leaving a careful foot of space between us.
For fourteen years, we had sat together on airplanes, in emergency rooms, at funerals, at weddings, on cheap folding chairs at neighborhood cookouts, and once on the curb outside our first apartment after someone burned popcorn badly enough to trigger the building alarm.
I could not remember us ever leaving that much space.
"The baby is probably yours," she said.
Probably.
The word lodged somewhere beneath my ribs.
I turned toward her.
"Probably?"
She stared at the folded tissue.
"I didn't sleep with anyone else."
"Then why are you saying probably?"
May you like
"Because I had an embryo transfer."
For several seconds, the sentence meant nothing.
