Wednesday Evening
Bess tells Evan about the pregnancy—every sordid detail.
It all happened so fast, she explains. One minute Bess was, if not happily married, at least unobjectionably attached. The next minute she was finding out about hookers and approximately ninety seconds after that, moving into a hastily secured rental in an undesirable part of town. By the time Bess realized her missed periods were a result of a baby and not stress, her life had already changed. She did tell her ex. A bad decision, in the end.
No, Bess hasn’t been all that nauseated, just a touch “off” from time to time, no more irritable or sick to her stomach than might be expected given the prostitutes and divorce and rancid smell outside her new apartment.
And what, exactly, does Bess plan to do about the unexpected twist? Well, she missed an appointment this afternoon. If not for the Cissy problem, Bess would be in San Francisco and, as of this very moment, not pregnant anymore. So time is getting short, for Cliff House and for Bess.
“You seem completely unfazed by this revelation,” Bess says after unspooling it all.
Is she glad for Evan’s blank expression? Or is she concerned?
“I shouldn’t have led with the whores,” she adds.
Evan shrugs. “Admit it, you like saying the word ‘whore.’” He cracks open a fresh beer. “Let me ask you something. If you planned to end the pregnancy, why’d you tell Brandon? I can only assume he was a total shit about it.”
“Yes,” Bess says with a salty sort of chuckle. “‘A total shit’ is one way to put it.”
“So, why then?” Evan presses. “Why’d you tell him?”
“Oh. Well. It felt like the right thing.”
So Bess hasn’t really told Evan “every sordid detail.”
Because while she plans to end the pregnancy now, she didn’t necessarily have the same designs before. Not that Bess wants to be a mother under such circumstances, and she’d pity any kid forced to have Brandon for a dad. But at first Bess simply didn’t know what to think. In telling Brandon she was looking for something: a sign, a hint, an outright directive. Be careful what you wish for and all that. He gave her one hell of a “sign.”
“I’m pregnant,” Bess had said, simple as that.
Because, while the situation was and is complex, this particular problem is quite basic. An unexpected pregnancy, the great equalizer. It’s happened in every country, in every tax bracket, in every year since the dawn of time. Pretty straightforward, at least until you realize it’s a total fucking disaster.
“You dirty slut” had been Brandon’s reaction.
“Um, excuse me?” Bess choked out.
It was a low blow, yet also quite Brandon. He had such an aggressive, full-metal-jacket way of talking to people, followed by a heavy dose of manufactured charm. It’s amazing what handsome, upwardly mobile guys can get away with. To think, Bess once considered him refreshingly direct.
“You can’t talk to me like that,” she’d said.
“Fuck yeah, I can. You’re a complete piece of shit.”
“Hey! Our marriage is ending, but I deserve to be treated like a human.”
Brandon shouted something else, jumped to his feet, and then lunged toward Bess—lunged!—before remembering where and who he was. Brandon was a tech executive, a man with stature, if only in his own mind. They were sitting in a Starbucks on Sand Hill Road, only five minutes from his office. Someone might be watching.
“You dirty fucking slut,” he said again, to be sure she heard.
He pulled back, then clenched his hands together.
“Jesus, Brandon, calm down,” Bess answered, trembling. “The baby is yours. I haven’t slept with anyone else in seven years, so you can stop with the ‘slut’ claptrap.”
“Nice try, bitch,” he said. “If you think you’re going to trap me…”
“Trap you? No, I very much want the divorce. More than ever.”
“‘More than ever,’” he said, mocking her in a girl’s voice. “Ugh, you disgust me. So you want money. Is that it? You’re trying to shake me down for cash?”
“What cash?”
“Fuck. You.”
“Listen, I don’t even know if I’m keep—” Bess shuddered. “I don’t want anything from you, not a single penny. Shaking you down? Please. I’m letting you have the house, remember? The house we bought together but with my money.”
Both of their names had been on the deed, but they used Bess’s savings for the down payment. Brandon’s cash was all tied up in his new company, the business now dead thanks to a fight over code. This was how badly Bess wanted out. He was allowed to have everything she put into that marriage, including their home.
“So are you keeping the baby?” Brandon asked, growling at her from across the table.
God, Bess thought at the time, the things that happened in a Starbucks. Books written. Divorces decreed. Pregnancies revealed. Bess had read somewhere that meth heads frequented the private bathrooms. All of humankind, foibling in a Starbucks.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Bess admitted. “But, rest assured, if I go ahead with the pregnancy, you won’t have to contribute a thing.”
“You’re not keeping it.”
“I haven’t made a decision but, like I said, I want exactly nothing from you, should I decide to … proceed. I just wanted you to know.”
“You’re not keeping it,” he repeated.
“I realize this is quite a shock and we’re not exactly in a place of mutual understanding.”
“You’re not having this baby.”
“I might, I might not,” Bess said, trying to keep her voice measured and low. “But you don’t actually have a say.”
Eyes were beginning to make skittish glances in their direction. Bess felt like she was back in the ED, battling a patient with “chronic back pain,” a patient who was desperate for oxycodone but who wasn’t going to get it, at least not from Dr. Codman. Brandon had that same jittery-irate-irrational vibe, as if his pulmonary system were about to rupture.
“Listen to me, you fucking cunt.”
He slammed both hands onto the table and stood.
“Hey, buddy,” said a voice. “You should…”
Calm down?
Excuse yourself?
Shut the hell up before I punch you in the face?
Bess didn’t hear what the guy said. The blood whooshing through her ears was too loud.
“Brandon!” she hissed. “Sit down.”
“If you have this fucking baby…”
“Shut. Up.”
“I want you to remember that thing was made when I was fucking a different whore every goddamned night.”
“You’re despicable,” Bess wheezed.
She took a sip of coffee, thinking it was water.
“The same dick that was inside of you,” Brandon raged on. “The very same dick that made that creature had been in a hundred other cunts before yours.”
Bess reached under the table for her bag, accidentally knocking over her coffee along the way. She didn’t bother to pick it up.
“The sperm that fertilized your pathetic egg,” he said, “is the very sperm I squirted over some bitch’s tits that same night. Your baby will have syphilis or gonorrhea. It will be half whore. Three-quarters whore, with you in the mix.”
By then, Bess was up on her feet, heading toward the exit. Brandon kept shouting. It would be the last time she saw the man she had promised to love forever. The last time she went into that Starbucks, too. Good thing Brandon wasn’t as well known in Silicon Valley as he imagined.
The next day Bess made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy. What Brandon said didn’t make any biological sense. She didn’t even need her medical degree for that. But Bess knew she’d never be able to stop hearing his words once she saw the baby’s face. Not ever having been a mom, Bess didn’t understand that the opposite would be true. A new child had a way of making the bad disappear, for a time.
“Do you still think it was the right thing to do?” Evan says now, all the way in Nantucket, on the other side of the country. “Telling him?”
Bess laughs sourly.
“Well, he called me a bunch of names,” she says, the furthest into the story she’ll go with Evan, or anyone else.
Not even Palmer knows the details of the coffee exchange. Maybe her cousin is onto something with the accusation of verbal abuse. Bess doesn’t know which is more reprehensible: that she can’t admit it, or that part of her believes verbal isn’t abuse enough to count. They should revoke her medical license for the very notion. She could give it to Palmer. Her cousin has limitless compassion and could figure out how to poke around in people eventually. That’s the easy part.
“After the name-calling,” Bess says, mind spinning with all she’s said, and even more so with what she hasn’t, “I felt pretty crappy. So the answer is no, I shouldn’t have said a thing.”
“You know what I think?” Evan leans back onto both elbows, his face turned toward the ocean. “You weren’t sure. I think that’s why you told Brandon.”
“Could be,” Bess says. Her body softens as her brain winds down. “But seeing him solidified my decision to end the pregnancy.”
“Your decision is anything but solidified. I think it’s the opposite.”
“Oh yeah?” she says, squinting at him. “How’s that?”
“You won’t drink my beer.” Evan gives a wink. “And you’re never one to turn down beer.”
“Good Lord,” Bess says, and rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Dr. Mayhew in session. So, if that’s true, then why didn’t I cancel today’s appointment? Especially after I knew I was headed to Nantucket? Travel is the perfect excuse.”
“You’re trying to kid yourself into being undecided, even though you know exactly what you want.”
“Yeah, well, whenever I’ve known ‘exactly what I want’ it turns out I’m dead wrong.”
“Just do it,” Evan says with a smile. “Have that baby.”
“Oh, sure. It’s so simple.” Bess snaps. “New person! Appear!”
“I didn’t say it’s simple. But, hell, you have a life, a career. You’re solid as hell.”
“I’m not the least bit solid,” she says. “I can’t even control Cissy!”
“Pretty sure you’re not expected to mother your own mom. What are you afraid of, Bess? Why can’t you raise a child on your own?”
“Oh, I certainly could,” Bess says with a sigh. “In theory. There are far more scandalous circumstances than a thirty-four-year-old professional, well-educated single mom. Like being a forty-year-old professional, well-educated non-mom.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t…” Bess sighs again. “I don’t know if I have it in me.”
“Of course you have it in you!”
Evan’s voice has always been so persuasive. Deep, powerful, as if coming from his lungs, or his heart. And those earnest brown eyes, like precious heirlooms she left behind. Bless it, Bess is falling for his old shtick. God, she hates when he does this. It’s so much easier to remember Evan Mayhew as the smug jerk from high school.
“I appreciate your faith in me,” Bess says, a little primly. “But this isn’t some novel where a major debacle turns out for the best and they all live happily ever after.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s great to fantasize about,” she says. “If this was a novel, and you know people love books set in Nantucket, but if my life were a novel, I’d chuck my ED job in San Francisco, move on-island, and become a general practitioner dealing with jellyfish stings and wacky boating mishaps.”
“Cobblestone burn,” Evan adds.
“Fishhook removal.”
“You’d have a hard time competing with Tim, though. I can’t see you doing house calls for destitute drug addicts who pay in stolen guns. Or for John Kerry.”
“Dr. Lepore can have his house calls. Last time my mom went in for a tick check he was complaining that he’s perennially short-staffed because no one can stand this island for long. It takes a certain kind of weirdo to be cut off from civilization year-round.”
“Yes it does,” Evan says, brows peaked. “The kind only found in books.”
“Exactly. Anyhow, I could do the easy, in-office problems, and save the zany, contrarian cases for Lepore. Together we’d solve Nantucketers’ health woes and I’d raise my baby with Cissy at Cliff House. She’d watch him, or her, while I worked. My child would write her first words in Sarah Young’s Book of Summer.”
“Don’t forget … you’d also fall in love with your high school beau.”
“Oh, God!” Bess says, and laughs. Her eyes at once well up. “What an idea. However, I don’t think my French teacher from Choate lives around here.”
“That’s harsh, Codfish.”
“That’s harsh? Um, what was that personal philosophy of yours? Never make the same mistake twice?”
“Touché,” he says, and shakes his head. “It’s my only rule.”
“Swell.” Bess finds herself frowning. “Yet another reason this proposed novel could never materialize. Not to mention, Cliff House is now more cliff than house. So there’s a big old hole in the middle of my plot. Literally.”
Evan nods as tears glint on his lashes. Is he crying? Or about to? Bess pushes the thought away.
“So,” Evan says, and hops up onto his feet. He brushes off the back of his jeans. “I should take you home. Any more beer for me and you’d have to drive.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Bess smiles. “But I have a bike, remember?”
She points toward the one she found in Cissy’s shed, blue and rusted near the handlebars.
“You Codman broads and your bikes.” Evan picks it up and launches it into his truck. “Nah. I’m driving.”
“Cliff House is, like, a mile away.”
“It’s getting dark. Plus, now that I know you’re in a delicate condition…”
“Why do I feel like you’re going to use that against me?” Bess asks. “As if I don’t have enough problems. Fine. I’ll permit you to drive me home.”
Bess jumps down and walks around to the passenger’s side of the cab. He starts the truck, which sputters and then groans into life. Bess checks her watch. They’ve been at the jobsite for over an hour, probably closer to two, but Bess isn’t ready to leave. She’s not prepared to drive the mile to Cliff House and greet the problems looming over the bluff. So when Evan turns to her and suggests a bite to eat, Bess is quick to agree. And she is grateful that her old friend can still read her in exactly the right way.