The Astronaut's Wife

18

There were any number of restaurants on Madison Avenue that catered to the rich women who constituted the New York corps known as “The Ladies who Lunch.” Shelley McLaren was known at all of them, but she favored one of them above all others. She was sure to get the best table no matter how late she called for a reservation, she was always welcome to order “off the menu”—asking for things not listed on the menu, that is—and for these privileges she was mercilessly overcharged, but because she was one of the few who had a house charge at the restaurant she had no idea how much money she actually paid for her microscopic lunches or how astronomically she tipped.

Not that she would have cared all that much, but like all rich people she did not like being taken advantage of. Nevertheless, when Jillian Armacost called with a special request, Shelley had insisted that she treat to lunch at “her” place at Madison and Seventy-seventh. Jillian was on time and shown to the table immediately. Shelley walked through the door fewer than three minutes later, but it took her a full thirty minutes to make it to the table.

Finally she plunked herself down in front of Jillian. “Sorry about that,” she said. “One knows so many people in places like this and you have to chitchat with all of them or the next thing you know they won’t support your charity and your tickets to the Costume Institute Reception at the Metropolitan suddenly go to some woman from Minneapolis that you’ve never heard of…”

“I never knew lunch could be so complicated,.” said Jillian. “What if you just stayed home and had a sandwich?”

“Social death,” said Shelly McLaren. She popped open her Judith Lieber purse and worked around in there for a moment. “Lunch may be complicated,” she said as she searched. “But strangely enough the most complicated things can be surprisingly simple.” She pulled a brown plastic vial filled with prescription pills from her purse and showed them to Jillian, passing them quickly across the table as a waiter glided up to them, smiling unctuously.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. McLaren,” he said. “It is so nice to see you again.”

“Two glasses of muscadet, Charlie,” Shelly ordered. “Two of those nice salads and leave us alone.”

“Very good, ma’am.” Charlie withdrew quickly. Shelley leaned forward and smiled at Jillian. Jillian was fingering the pill bottle under the table. “Now, about these things,” said Shelley. “My caterer gets them from someone in the French Caribbean. Martinique, I think. The French are so advanced in this sort of thing, don’t you think? RU486 was supposed to have been legal here years‘ ago, but it will never happen…

The waiter named Charlie returned with the wine and Shelley clammed up as he placed the glasses in front of Them. They waited a couple of seconds before speaking again.

“Are they safe?” Jillian asked.

“Yes,” Shelley replied. “But there’s really something you should know before you—” She was silent again as the salads were delivered and Charlie withdrew.

“What should I know?” Jillian asked. This was not a meeting she had relished, but she has thought about it hard and long and now she was determined to go through with it.

“With these things, Jillian,” said Shelley, “all sales are final. You take them and you’ll abort. You have to ask yourself, do you want to go through with this?”

Jillian nodded. “Yes. Absolutely. ”

“Okay,” said Shelley. “Take both pills when you get home. Then go lie down for a while. Then there will be quite a bit of vile cramping, then once you start spotting it goes pretty fast.” Shelley took a slug of her wine. “Believe me, if I can get through it, anyone can. ”

“You?” said Jillian.

Shelley had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “Jillian, we all have. It’s like there’s a secret club. There’s ‘the Pill’ and then, just in case, there’s ‘the Pills.’ ”

“And Spencer won’t know?”

Shelley picked up her wine glass again and waved off an imaginary Spencer. “If he’s anything like the rest of them… he’ll think it was a miscarriage and fly down to Van Cleefs to buy you a bracelet. If he feels really bad he’d go to Harry Winston’s.” Shelley extended her wrist and rattled a thick diamond bracelet on her wrist.

“Unless he’s looking for it,” Shelley continued, “there will be no way to tell. And why should he be looking for it?”

Neither of them had touched their salads and Jillian had not had her wine, but Shelley signaled for the check. Charlie brought it and Shelley signed it. The she looked over at Jillian who appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Shelley put her hand on Jillian’s. “Don’t beat yourself up about this, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s not as if any of this means anything, you know. It’s all nonsense…” Jillian stood in the bright white of the bathroom connected to her bedroom and looked at the bottle of pills. Very slowly she unscrewed the top and shook the contents into her hand. The two tablets were very thick and dusty. They would be difficult to force down her dry throat. She ran the water in the sink and filled a glass with it—she was about to put the pills in her mouth when she began to hear her own heart beating, getting louder and louder until she could hear nothing else. But then there came another sound… a much faster thump. Two more heartbeats. The heart beats of the twin fetuses, pounding away so fast as if telegraphing a message to their mother, begging not to be killed.

“Please…” Jillian whimpered. “Please.”

She looked down at the pills in her palm and her hand trembled. The fast beating of the fetuses’ hearts seemed. to grown in volume and intensity. Jillian became even more fearful.

“Be quiet,” she begged. “Be quiet, please… He’ll hear you. He’ll come in here.” She had no idea where Spencer was, but she had become convinced that there was some kind of psychic bond between the things in her belly and the man masquerading as her husband.

But the twin hearts only beat louder and faster, and added to the disconcerting noise was the whoosh and whine of the amniotic fluid that surrounded and protected them.

The pills were still in her hand and the glass of water was poised. Jillian was crying, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “Please, I have to… It’s okay, it’s okay… it’ll be over soon…please ”

But it wouldn’t be. The moment she spoke those words a terrible pain ripped through her body—it seemed to scorch her belly—driving her to her knees. She clutched the pills so tightly in her fist that they might have been ground to powder.

From her knees Jillian gasped, “I’m sorry… I have to. It’ll be better this way. It will be, I promise.” She opened her hands and looked down at the pills.

“I can’t,” she cried. “Oh God, I can’t do it…” Behind her the bathroom door flew open and Spencer charged into the room.

“What were you going to do to them?” When Jillian turned and saw him, she screamed and forced herself to her feet.

“What are those pills? What were you going to do with them?”

“Oh God, you heard them,” Jillian cried, “didn’t you? They called out to you. ”

Spencer forced calm into his voice and tried to take her in his arms. “Jillian…”

“Oh Jesus, you heard them,” she wailed. She backed away from him then ran from the bathroom and through the bedroom. Spencer chased after her.

“Jillian, it’s okay,” he shouted. “Really. It’s okay, Jillian, please stop.”

She was headed for the front door—no idea in her head where she might be going except that she knew she had to get away from him—but when she reached it Spencer stood there, barring her flight.

He put out his hands for her and moved slowly towards her. “Jilly, please,” he said soothingly. “It is going to be all right. You have to try and calm down. That’s all.”

But Jillian wasn’t buying it. She backed away from him, shaking her head, desperate to think of what she might do next.

“Jillian,” said Spencer. Then he reached for her as another spasm of that horrible pain ripped through her. She doubled over and fell hard, tumbling down the steps, hitting the bottom with sickening force. But she managed to stagger to her feet, a dazed and dreamy look on her face as she looked up the stairs at Spencer.

“Jillian, please…” Then he got a very strange look on his face. And even in her dazed and pain-wracked state she noticed it.

“Spencer? What is it?”

Jillian followed the line of his gaze and saw that he was staring at the patch between her legs. The material of her clothing was sodden with blood and a long line of gore had trickled down her leg.

She said, “Spencer?” She saw him coming down the stairs toward her, but she saw him as if in stop-motion, each blink an exposure bringing him a little closer. Then everything went black. And silent.

.

Then everything was noise and bright lights. Jillian had no idea how much time had passed, but she knew she was in a hospital. She could tell by the sound and the smells and the speed of the rolling gurney. There were doctors and, nurses surrounding the moving bed, looking down at her, talking about her. But no one was talking to her.

“You must keep him away from me,” she managed to say. Those few words seem to exhaust her and she felt that terrible weakness of the helpless.

“She’s still hemorrhaging,” a nurse announced.

“Please,” Jillian gasped. “Please…please…”

A doctor spoke, his tone matter-of-fact and dispassionate. “If she’s still hemorrhaging then she’s going to bleed out in a minute or two. Pure and simple.”

Jillian thought she heard herself saying “Please… please…” But she couldn’t be sure if she was saying the words or merely thinking them. She tried to raise her hand to her lips but she cquld not find them. She did not know if she had been sedated or if she was dying. She heard someone say, “Is there an OR free?” Jillian was looking up as a surgical team prepared itself. There were lots of doctors and nurses in those scary green-colored scrubs. Bright lights were shone into her eyes. There seemed to be tons of equipment—monitors, lights, shiny tanks of oxygen and anesthetics. There was lots of noise and clatter.

All faces were obscured by surgical masks; all she could see were their eyes. And there was only one set of eyes she recognized in all of them. Spencer’s.

“Please…” she said. But no one paid any attention to her, the woman they were about to save.