I shake my head. “I saw you leaning in against that girl who works at your office, Jack,” I say. “I answered the phone a dozen times and someone hung up. Lola showed me the photo of you and the dry cleaner chick on Facebook. I know there were other women.”
He shakes his head and sighs. “What does it even matter what I did or didn’t do? You’ve put forth your evidence and convicted me. You’re the one who kicked me out.”
“Don’t blame this on me,” I say. I’m doing enough of that on my own.
He stands up, frustrated and irritated. “I see what this is. I get it. I was bad. Now I’m supposed to apologize.”
“You don’t get it at all,” I say. I stand and walk to the door, opening it for him.
“I just apologized,” he says, getting angry now.
It’s easy to push buttons when you know right where they are. He meets me at the door.
“No, you didn’t,” I say. “You said you were supposed to apologize. That’s not an apology. It’s even worse. It’s telling me that you know you’re supposed to, but you’re not going to.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“No,” I say. “You don’t.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” he asks. “I’m sorry about the other woman.”
“Women,” I correct him.
“I’m sorry we didn’t have another baby.”
“We did have another baby. I just didn’t get to take him home. You didn’t even care that we lost him. You think it was for the best. You said so.”
“Don’t do that,” he says, angry. “Don’t you dare make me out to be a monster. I didn’t say the miscarriage was for the best. I said not getting pregnant again after that was.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” I yell at him so that I don’t cry.
“No, it isn’t,” Jack says. “I know how much losing that pregnancy hurt you. I know how much it made you crazy for another baby. You can’t get him back, Nina. But you know what you can get back? Me. I don’t want this!”
“Please go,” I say.
This is the first time we’ve talked about the miscarriage since the days after we lost the baby. Nineteen weeks in. Miscarriage is an inadequate word. I had felt him move inside me. We had seen him on the ultrasound. We had named him. Then he was still. Then he was gone.
I couldn’t talk to Jack about it. I stopped talking to Jack about anything—except getting pregnant again. He didn’t want to talk babies. He didn’t really want to try again.
“You’re still wearing your rings, Nina,” Jack says and reaches out to me, but I pull away. “Think about this. There may still be a way for us to be happy. There may be a way to come back from this.”
I’m not sure I want there to be.
7
At home, Cassie meets me at the door in her bathing suit.
“I knew you’d forget,” she says with her hands on her ever-developing hips. “I don’t see why I can’t go to the pool by myself. That’s what the lifeguard is for, Mother.”
Mother. Ouch.
“Is that why you came back from Dad’s?” I ask, setting my suitcase down by the couch as I walk through the living room. “The pool thing?”
I don’t know what I expect her to say. No, sweetest Mummy, I came home because I missed you so very much. British accent and all.
I actually hadn’t forgotten. It was the dreaded, weekly Teen Swim. An evening pool party for all the kids in the building. It was supposed to be a way to build community and keep the teenagers out of trouble. I personally didn’t see how teenage girls in bikinis were going to keep anyone out of trouble.
“Let me get myself together and we’ll go,” I say.
Cassie flops down on the couch with a huff.
Thanks ever so much, wonderful Mum, for taking time out of your life to sit in the dank and humid indoor pool whilst I gallivant around with my mates. Bloody good fun.
I hate the pool. It’s indoors for crying out loud. I wish I could be one of those mothers who just drops her teenagers off for the day, lets them swim and giggle and flirt. But I can’t. Maybe I could have been a mother like that if I’d been able to bring my other baby home from the hospital. If I thought I had any control over anything. But I don’t, and that scares me to death. So I end up hanging around places like the indoor pool, growing gills against the thick, moist, chlorine-saturated air.
There’s always another mother or two with separation issues of their own, so I’m not alone at least. I think the Teen Swim was supposed to be a chance for the parents to interact as well, but we don’t. Mostly, the mothers just keep to themselves, spaced out at socially acceptable distances from each other, talking on the phone to someone more important than the people around them.
I take a book to read, or pretend to. Cassie pretends she’s at the pool without me, and I deal with it. I watch her for a bit and then actually read a few pages. We’re not there long, when from over the top of my book—pages wilting in the wetness—I catch the frightening sight of my fifteen-year-old daughter talking to a boy. I startle upright in the plastic pool chair and fumble the book into my lap. I know it’s a melodramatic reaction, but it just happens that way.
Across the pool, down at the deep end, Cassie is with some teenage boy. Cassie, who has hips and curves and has figured out how to shift her weight from one leg to the other while tossing her perfectly wavy chestnut hair “just so,” has an allure that even the swampy air in the indoor, condo pool cannot stifle.
I pick up the book with nervous fingers and place it
