Mixed Blessings (23 page)

"Don't you people ever talk about anything except pregnancy and childbirth? I'm sick of hearing about people's deliveries and hemorrhages, and how long their labors took, and how many babies they already have, and how many this one makes. Christ, it's a miracle we don't have to talk about their Pap smears."

Her father looked across the table at her, and then glanced at his wife with a worried frown. Something was very wrong with Diana.

"What brought that on?" Sam asked, leaning back in her chair, holding her back with one hand, and her stomach with the other. "God . . . if this baby doesn't stop kicking me ."

"For chrissake!" Diana shouted at her, and pushed her chair away from the table. "I don't give a damn if your fucking baby kicks your teeth out. Can't you shut up about it for ten minutes?" Sam stared at her in shock, and then started to cry, and then she left the table, but Diana already had her coat on by then, and she apologized to her parents over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Mom . . . Dad . . . I just can't take this. I guess I shouldn't have come." But her oldest sister was already striding across the dining room and standing in the front hall with a look of rage on her face Diana hadn't seen there since she'd set fire to her brand-new electric curlers when they were in high school.

"How dare you behave like that in your parents' house, and talk to any of us like that? Who the hell do you think you are?"

"Gayle, please . . . don't. I'm sorry. Diana is upset. We shouldn't have come." Andy tried to calm the two women down, but it was to no avail. And Seamus had gone to tend to Sam's wounded feelings as she cried in the bathroom. Their parents were distraught to see their children fighting like hooligans, as her mother said, and the children had all started to go wild and leave the table.

But Gayle wasn't going to be easily swayed. She was furious now, and her jealousy of long years was finally finding an outlet. "What the hell does she have to be upset about? Her job? Her career? Miss High and Mighty, who's too smart and too important to have kids and live like the rest of us. No, she's the big career girl, the Stanford graduate. Well, guess what? I don't give a fuck. So how's that, Miss Career Lady?"

"Good-bye, I'm leaving," Diana called to her parents as she tied the belt on her coat and looked frantically at Andy. She had heard everything her sister had said, and she didn't trust herself to answer.

She knew she would lose it completely if she even tried to speak to her, and she didn't want to do that.

"Mom, I'm sorry," she called out, and saw her father looking at her.

The expression on his face tore at her heart, but she just couldn't help it. He looked as though she had betrayed him.

"You should be sorry," Gayle said, as Sam finally came back out of the bathroom and into the hallway. "Look what you did to Thanksgiving for everyone," Gayle said accusingly, and she wasn't wrong, but without knowing it, they had provoked it.

"I shouldn't have come," Diana said softly, with her hand on the doorc and Andy just behind her.

"Why the hell not? You should have kept your mouth shut," Gayle went on, and then suddenly Diana snapped, and she leapt across the hallway in a single bound, and put her hands around her sister's throat, and squeezed her.

"If you don't shut up now, I'm going to kill you, do you hear me? You don't know anything about me, or about my life, or why I do or don't or may never have children. Do you understand that, you incredibly stupid, insensitive bitch. . . . I don't have babies because I'm sterile, you moron. . . . Is that clear enough for you? Do you get that? I can't have children. My insides turned to shit years ago from an I.U.D, and I never knew it. Is that clear now, Gayle? Would you like to talk about my job that I no longer care about? Or my house that's too fucking big for two people who're never going to have kids, or maybe you'd like to talk about the Murphy baby again, or the McWilliamses' twins, or we could just sit here and watch Sam rub her stomach. Good night, everyone."

She glanced at the shocked faces of everyone, all of whom were standing by then, and out of the corner of her eye she could see that both her younger sister and her mother were crying. But Gayle only stood there with her mouth open, as Diana rushed out the front door to their car, and Andy glanced apologetically at them, and hurried behind her.

It was quite a scene they left behind, but Diana insisted she didn't care anymore. And secretly, Andy thought the outburst might do her good. She needed to ventilate, to cry, to scream, to rail at someone, and if not with her family, where else?

Although he had to admit it had made for a hell of a Thanksgiving.

He looked over at her with a smile as they drove home, and she wasn't even crying. "Want to go for a turkey sandwich somewhere?" He was only half teasing and she laughed. In spite of everything, she hadn't completely lost her sense of humor.

"Do you suppose I'm going insane from all this stuff?" It had been a nightmarish time for her and maybe it was just as well it was over.

"No, but I think you need to get it out of your system. What about a therapist for both of us? It might help." He'd thought of going to one himself recently, just to have someone to talk to. He couldn't talk to her anymore, and he hated to tell his friends what was happening. He had tried talking to Bill, but with Denise pregnant now, it was too awkward trying to talk to him about Diana being sterile.

And his brothers were too young to be helpful. And in his own way, just like Diana, he felt isolated, depressed, and defeated. "I was thinking about a vacation too."

"I don't need a vacation," she said instantly, and he laughed.

"Sure. Okay. How about if I drive you back to Pasadena right now so we can discuss it? Or maybe you'd like to wait for Christmas and try for a second round? I'm sure your sisters will be happy to oblige you. I don't know about you," he said seriously, "but I am not spending Christmas this year in Pasadena." And she had to admit, she didn't want to go either.

"I'm not sure I could get the time off from work to go anywhere." She had been so distracted for so long, she really felt she owed them something.

"At least ask. Even a week would do us good. I thought we could go to the Mauna Kea, in Hawaii. Half the network will be there, but most of them go to the Mauna Lani. I'm serious, Di."

He looked at her as he drove home, and she could see that he was as unhappy as she was. "I don't think we've got a lot of mileage left in us, unless we do something major about our batteries, or our engines, or something. I don't know how to deal with it anymore, or with you, and what you feel. I just know that we're in trouble." She knew it, too, but she had been too upset even to try to reach him. She was lost in her own agonies and could do nothing to help him. She wasn't even sure about taking a vacation with him, but she thought that the suggestion that they each see a therapist was a good one.

"Okay, I'll try to get some time," she said half-heartedly. He was right though, and she knew it. And then, as they drove up to their house, she turned to him with a sad expression. "Andy, if you want out . . . I'll understand. You have a right to a lot more than I can ever give you."

"No," he said, as tears filled his eyes. "I have a right to what you promised me . . . for better or worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part. It never said anything about the deal being offifyou can't have babies. Okay, so that's terrible. I admit it, it hurts me too. Butlmarriedyou . . . and I love you. And if we can't have kids, then that's the way it is. Maybe we'll adopt one some day, maybe we'll figure out something else, maybe they'll come up with some fantastic new laser that will change things for you, or maybe not, but I don't care about all that, Di......There were tears on his cheeks as he held her hands. "I just want my wife back."

"I love you," she said softly. It had been a terrible time for both of them, the worst of her life, and she knew that it still wasn't over.

She'd have to mourn for a long time, and maybe she'd never be the same again. She just didn't know yet. "I'm just not sure who I am anymore . . . what this means . . .what this makes me She still felt like such a failure.

"For right now, it makes you a woman who can't have kids, a woman with a husband who loves her very much, a woman who had a terrible thing happen to her and she never knew it that's who you are. You're the same person you always were. None of that has changed. The only thing that's changed is a tiny piece of our future."

"How can you call that tiny?" She looked angry at him again, but he squeezed her hands harder to bring her back to reality.

"Stop it, Di. It is tiny. What if we had a child and it died? It would be terrible, but you and I wouldn't end there. We'd go on, we'd have to."

"What if we couldn't?" she asked sadly.

"What choice do we have? To ruin two lives, to destroy a good marriage? What kind of sense does that make? Di, I don't want to lose you. We've lost enough as it is . . . please please . . help me save our marriage......

"Okay . . . I'll try . . ." she said sadly, but she wasn't even sure where to start anymore, how to be what she once had been, and he could see that. She wasn't even doing a good job at the magazine, and she knew it.

"All you have to do, Di, is try. Day by day, step by step, inch by inch . . . and maybe one of these days we'll get there." He leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips as he said it, but he didn't even hope for more. They hadn't made love to each other since before Labor Day, and he didn't dare approach her anymore. She had told him there was no point to their lovemaking now. Nothing mattered. Her life was over. But tonight he could see a glimmer of hope, a tiny shadow of what she had been before Dr. Johnston had told her she couldn't have babies.

He kissed her again, and then helped her out of the car, and they went inside arm in arm. It was the closest they had been in months, and he wanted to cry, he was so relieved. Maybe there was hope for them . . . maybe they would make it. He had almost lost hope. And now, maybe it hadn't been such a rotten Thanksgiving after all. He smiled at her as she took off her coat, and she laughed as she remembered Gayle's face, and she admitted to Andy that she'd been really awful, but a tiny part of her had enjoyed it.

"It probably did her good." He grinned, and led her into the kitchen.

"Come on, why don't you call your mom and tell her you're okay, and I'll make you a bologna sandwich. Something really festive."

"I love you," she said softly, and he kissed her again, and then she slowly dialed her parents. Her father answered the phone, and she could hear the children raising hell in the background.

"Dad, it's me . . . I'm sorry. .

"I'm very worried about you," he said honestly. "I feel terrible thatldidn't know what kind of pain you were in." He knew her well enough to know that her outburst had been the culmInation of her distress, and just seeing it had made him ache for her, and feel as though he had failed her as a father.

"I think I'm okay now. Maybe tonight did me good. But I'm really sorry if I ruined Thanksgiving."

"Not at all." He smiled across the hall at his wife, coming to see who it was. He tried to let her know it was Diana. "It gave everyone something new to talk about. It was actually very refreshing," he teased, and Diana's mother looked at him sadly. At least she had called them. She had known something was wrong, but she'd had no idea what, and Diana had never told them. "I want you to call me if you need me . . . or your mother, from now on. Is that a promise?"

"I promise," she said, feeling like a child again, as she looked across her own kitchen at her husband. He had his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, and he was very busy. And for the first time in a long time, he looked happy.

"We're here for you, Diana, whenever you need us. Diana's eyes filled with tears, as did her mother's as she listened.

"I know that, Daddy. Thank you. And tell Mom and the girls I'm sorry, too, will you please, Dad?"

"Of course I will. Now take care of yourself" His eyes were damp. He loved her so dearly and he hated to think of her in pain.

"I will, Daddy. You too . . . I love you As she hung up, she was suddenly reminded of her wedding day. She and her father had always been so close, and they still were, even though she hadn't told him about this. But she knew that if she had wanted to, she could have.

And what he had said was true.

They were there for her, and she knew it.

"Ready for salami, pastrami, and bologna on rye?" Andy asked ceremoniously with a kitchen towel over one arm, and a huge plate of sandwiches for her. It suddenly felt as though they had something to celebrate, which was strange. But in a way they did. They had found each other again, and that was no small thing. It had almost been too late, and they had just climbed back up over the cliff. Happy Thanksgiving.

Charlie cooked a perfect turkey for Barbie. And she was there with him this time. She didn't go anywhere, or come home late. She still felt guilty about their anniversary. But Charlie was also aware, as they sat down to dinner together that night, that something was missing between them. He had felt it for a while, possibly since she'd spent the Labor Day weekend in Las Vegas, or maybe even before that. She had come back itching for excitement again, talking about the shows they'd seen, and the friends they met up with, and wanting Charlie to go out dancing with her. But he was usually too tired to do it. And he wasn't a great dancer anyway. But he noticed, too, that suddenly she was complaining constantly about what he didn't do for her, and how square he was, even the way he dressed, which really wasn't fair, since he never bought new clothes for himself, only for Barbie. Maybe Mark had been right, Charlie mused to himself, and he shouldn't have let her go to Las Vegas.

Ever since she got back, she stayed out with her girlfriends all the time, she went to the movies and dinner with them, and once in a while she even called him and said she was too tired to come home and she had decided to stay overnight at Judi's.

He never complained, but he didn't like it either. He had mentioned it to Mark, who had reminded him again that he'd better keep her on a short leash or he'd be very sorry.