Stunned, I reeled from his sudden turn to viciousness.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said.
“About?”
“Us.”
“What’s there to say? My wife is pregnant,” he said. Silence hung between us, swinging like a body from the gallows.
It reminded me of the first time I’d ever been broken up with in high school. My boyfriend, a football player, dumped me for a cheerleader the weekend before prom. He made it out to be that I was a prude and he wasn’t leaving high school a virgin. I learned early that sex was a commodity between men and women. Yet here I was, having given it freely, and still being left, the prettier, skinnier girl chosen over me once more.
It was more complicated than that, I told myself. There was a baby involved now.
Part of me wanted to beg him to leave her. My pride—what little I had left—wouldn’t allow it.
“I came here to end things with you,” I said.
Tom smiled.
“I thought you already had.”
“What? By not answering your texts?”
“It seemed pretty apparent.”
“I didn’t know what to say!” I exclaimed. “Look, Tom. I respect you. A lot. I don’t want things to end badly between us. I’m still your student.”
Tom nodded.
“Of course,” he said.
“This doesn’t have to change anything, except—”
“I know.”
We stayed there in silence for a moment. It was a funeral for what had passed between us. All of the chaos, the energy, dead—just like that. Snuffed out like the life of a wild animal darting across the highway straight into the headlights of a semi-truck.
“I’m glad you’ll be getting the award,” he said.
I furrowed my brow.
“You deserve it,” he smiled. It seemed like a mask. Perhaps an effort to hide the hurt he felt.
“Thank you,” I said.
That evening, I sat in my car and cried for half an hour. Nose stuffy and head aching, I called Birdie. She came right away.
We met at a bar on campus and toasted the end of my affair with Tom. She told me I’d done the right thing. She was practically joyous.
“You’re too smart for that,” she said.
“I don’t know about that.”
“He’s the kind of guy that needs a victim,” she went on. “And you’re not a victim, Ione. You’re a lot tougher than you give yourself credit for.”
I looked at her, wondering what she saw when she looked at me.
“Besides, you’re still getting the award. That’s a good thing! At least you’ll get some contacts out of the deal.” She laughed and ordered us another round of shots.
“I guess all’s not lost,” I smiled.
We left arm in arm that night, singing the chorus from a Queen song all the way back to the car where we realized we’d be better off walking back to Birdie’s apartment. We shared her bed, an intimacy of our friendship that I cherished. As I fell asleep that night, Birdie’s back to mine, I thought, everything’s going to be okay.
How wrong I was.
VANESSA
The image of Mark and his warning about the baby cling to Vanessa like a sheen of sweat for the rest of the morning. The ominous nature of the vision puts her on edge, others on the compound stay out of her way, already wary of her volatile moods, changing quicker than reagents in a chemical reaction constantly fed with a new catalyst. But by the afternoon, she can contain herself no more. She needs to know if the baby is okay.
She gathers a lunch tray and bowl for Birdie. After grabbing it, she turns to leave the empty cafeteria.
Tom stands in the doorway, quiet as a wraith. Vanessa has no idea how long he’s been there or what fresh hell it signals, but she doesn’t care. She stares at him, her expression blank.
She doesn’t think it possible, but he looks like he’s lost weight. Skin seems to stretch too tightly over his cheekbones and his jeans hang from hipbones sharper than those of the man she had married.
The stress of what happened has worn on him in only a few days. Wanted in connection to what was being called a murder, he had refused to talk to authorities or face the situation like a man. He is a child in the midst of a ghastly crime scene. It should elicit an emotion other than the contempt for him that Vanessa so strongly feels. Tom used up the last of her empathy long ago.
“Hey,” he says.
Vanessa doesn’t speak. Tom steps forward, his frustration with his situation apparent. And that’s how she thinks of it: his situation. The emotion is carved on his features like an ancient inscription only now revealed by erosion from the latest in a series of storms.
“How is she?” he asks, nodding at the tray.
How do you think? Vanessa imagines herself saying.
“Fine,” she says instead. “Hungry. She asked for more food,” she lies, trying to position the tray at such an angle that Tom won’t notice the bowl is empty.
He doesn’t, and there’s a part of her that hates him for it. His capacity for self-absorption repulses and astounds her still. If he had any awareness beyond himself, he’d have never wound up here.
“And the baby?” he prods the conversation along.
“Fine,” Vanessa says.
She isn’t entirely sure how true that is. She has an ache at the base of her skull that makes her think the baby might not be fine.
Tom nods apparently satisfied with this assessment and Vanessa feels the web of tension at her neck slowly start to unravel. He steps toward her and reaches out a hand for her arm. He leans down and kisses her on the cheek. And as much as she hates him for his self-absorption, she hates herself more for the fact that she bears witness to it. She hates herself for being here at all. She hopes that there’s still time to make something of herself out of all of this.
He turns,
