“No!” Sandra exclaimed, repulsed.
“Have you shared intravenous needles with anyone?”
“No.”
When Dee asked the final question, Sandra thought for a few moments about whether she should mention Cindy Thomasini’s name.
“Do you know of any other partner Jack Smith may have had sex with, or shared intravenous injected drugs with?” Dee looked at her intently. Sandra was looking back at Dee with equal intensity. Finally, she made up her mind. She couldn’t lie. If it made Jack look bad, he brought it on himself.
“Yes, I met another woman that he was having sex with just a few hours ago. That you would call me within minutes of leaving her is unnerving. I keep trying to understand the purpose for all of this.” Sandra opened her purse and took out the sheet of paper on which she had written information about Cindy and handed it over to Dee Frank. “She is thirty-one. She was in a relationship with Jack for three years.” Sandra had not yet had the time to think too deeply about what Cindy had told her. Jack was screwing her while he was sleeping with Sandra. Only a few times a week, Cindy had said!
Oh, my God.
Dee thanked her for the information and they concluded the interview. Sandra left the office without saying good-bye. She was worried that if she opened her mouth, yodeling screams would emerge that nothing could stifle.
She couldn’t get a cab, which just pissed her off even more. She decided not to go back to the office; by the time she got downtown she would have to turn around and leave anyway. There was a subway entrance on Twenty-eighth Street and she would get on the train there and get home. She just wanted to be home with the doors locked. Her apartment was on the Upper West Side. It was in a genteel neighborhood. She didn’t want to think about AIDS and mistresses and shared needles. Several times in the hot subway car, she felt faint. The man next to her smelled bad—body odor and cigarettes.
If I have to barf, I’ll just face him and do it in his lap. Don’t adults know that bathing is not optional?
An image of her late parents shimmered in front of her face.
Relax, you’ll be fine.
She could hear her mother’s voice.
You make me so proud! You are proof of my worthiness.
Her mother used to tell her that repeatedly. Finally, Sandra gave in. She couldn’t control the tears. Thank God her parents had died. She couldn’t imagine having to tell them she was HIV-positive, let alone unmarried and pregnant by a married man.
Fortunately, no one on a subway train cared if she cried. She just let the tears flow. When her stop came up, she got off the train and dried her tears as she walked up the stairs to Broadway. She’d had a stomachache all day, probably because she was constipated. There were so many lovely manifestations of pregnancy that are never talked about and she had almost every one of them. She would stop in the grocery store and pick up something to eat for dinner and get an enema, too. Eating was so boring that she had to remind herself constantly to do it. At her last visit to the obstetrician, she was shocked to learn that she had lost four pounds that week. The doctor warned her to either reverse the trend or go into the hospital where he could monitor her nutrition.
She strolled up and down the aisles looking for something that would grab her interest. Nothing looked appetizing. Finally, she saw pizza bread. The crust was shiny with olive oil and the fat from the pepperoni that had melted out when it was in the oven. She grabbed a loaf. A few more things looked promising and she was ready to check out. She placed her items on the counter along with her enema. The man behind her was looking at her strange selection of purchases.
“Glad you aren’t eating dinner at my house tonight?” she asked him.
The walk home was only four blocks but it felt like miles. The day had gotten away from her and she realized that she hadn’t heard from Pam. She wouldn’t say anything to her about Cindy Thomasini. It was irrelevant. Sandra would protect Pam from any more horrendous news about her husband. About Jack. She realized that after what she had done to Pam, she had deserved to hear from Cindy about her affair with Jack.
Revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord
. She felt separated from God. But wasn’t that when faith played a major role? The tiniest faith was all it took.
Faith the size of a tiny mustard seed
. She needed that right now. Needed to believe that the baby would be safe, that she wouldn’t die young and leave the baby an orphan and that Pam would continue to be her friend.
Her front door loomed ahead and it seemed to take forever to get there. She didn’t notice the car parked in front of her building where no parking was allowed until the door opened and a tall, handsome police officer unfolded himself out of it. Her heart did a little summersault. Tom Adams.
“Don’t scream,” he said and walked up to her.
“Get lost,” Sandra said. “I have nothing to say to you.” She kept walking toward the front door.
“Just give me a minute, will you please?” Tom Adams had long legs but was having to skip along beside her to keep up. “I’m sorry!”
“Don’t you have some parking tickets to write?” She reached her door and struggled with the key, shaking him off when he attempted to help her unlock the door.
“If you’d wait a minute, I can get it for you,” he said.
“Go to hell!” she yelled. “Go back to Brooklyn or wherever it is you live. You are the last person on earth that I want to hear anything from right now, do you understand me?”
Without another word, he took the bag of groceries from her and pulled her against his body with his free arm. She allowed the intrusion.
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Tom said.
“Believe it, jerk,” she said. And then she started crying. “And I hate you!”
She let the tears flow down her cheeks, wetting his shoulder. She gave him the key and he opened the door for her. When they got into the apartment, they didn’t speak as they put the groceries away. She forgot about the enema until it was too late. He picked it up and read the label aloud. They laughed.
“It’s not that funny,” she said.
“Yes it is,” Tom replied.
He filled the teakettle while she got the new coffee pot out from under the counter; she hadn’t thought she would ever need it again. He prepared tea for her while she made coffee for him, neither saying a word. Then he followed her down the stairs to the back patio; they would sit in the shade of the surrounding buildings and drink their beverages. They still hadn’t spoken more than a few words beyond the bickering. She thought about the note he had left her the last time they were together, just a week or so before. In it, he told her he didn’t think he could handle her past and knew that it was ridiculous to expect her to pretend that it didn’t exist. So he was bowing out of her life. She remembered the way it had affected her;
what else could happen?
she had thought.
Good riddance.
But now that he was here, now that she felt him and could see him, she realized that if he did that to her a second time, it would leave a mark. She looked at him intently.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” was all she said.
“I won’t. I promise. Forgive me?”
“Yes, I think I will. And not just because you are so damn cute. I need you, unfortunately. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the most desirable woman around right now.” She had nothing to lose by being self-deprecating. If he couldn’t tolerate it, the sooner he left again, the better. “You’re the only one who will put up with me.”
He squeezed her hand. “I love you, Sandra.” There, he had said it. Once he had said it, he couldn’t take it back. He was almost thirty years old and he had never said ‘I love you.’ He had never felt love for a woman before. He was willing to face the wrath of his family, to lose their respect, even their love, for this woman. He would give everything up for her. He wouldn’t lie; before, he could only imagine a life with Sandra and her baby if he was able to claim the baby as his own. Now, he knew that he would raise another man’s baby with as much love as if he had provided the sperm himself. This was his wife. This woman was the one that his mother said she had been praying for since the day he was born.
While they sat outside, listening to the sounds of traffic dying down as rush hour came to an end, Tom thought about the prayer and how hypocritical it was of him to think he could ask for anything when he wasn’t being honest with Sandra or himself. Despite the fact they’d only been together for a short time, they felt passionately about each other. Yet they had already allowed several pink elephants into their lives. For one thing, Tom realized that he was lying to himself and to her when he said that the baby’s parentage wasn’t important. He had said he didn’t care what everyone would think about him and Sandra, but he did care. He expected Sandra to end her relationship with Pam. He wasn’t jealous of a dead man, but he thought that every time the two women would get together, they would talk about Jack and try to keep him alive for the child’s sake.
Sandra realized that her relationship with Pam might be a temporary thing. She felt it. Even though they needed each other now, it was part of the grieving process. At the beginning, she and Pam were free to share stories about Jack with each other, things that no one else would know. The telling grew very one-sided as the women discovered that only Pam had stories that were validated by her marriage to Jack. The ones Sandra wanted to share were too painful for Pam to hear. They emphasized the emptiness of Pam’s marriage, and nothing more. If Pam and Sandra were going to live in a vacuum for the rest of their lives, making their lives a shrine to Jack would be fine. But they weren’t going to do that. They were going to try to move on.
Tom and Sandra had spent an afternoon last weekend with Pam and her sister, Marie, in Babylon, and it was an eye-opener. He hadn’t thought he was a prude, but was he? After about an hour in the company of their chef that night, Jeff Babcock who was Pam’s neighbor, Tom realized that his tolerance for the man was near zero. And it wasn’t because he was gay; Tom was not a homophobe. No, it was because Jeff Babcock was a bore. And Marie? Being in her presence on two occasions was two too many. She was a nut case. Tom was only surprised that he had never encountered her before in police matters because her kind made up the bulk of his arrests. Pam reminded him of all the wealthy matrons he had met who had empty, frivolous lives.
Tom fought the temptation to investigate Jack Smith because if Sandra found out, it would definitely mean the end of them as a couple. But his police intuition smelled a rat; worse than an AIDS-infected rat. He needed to get up and move; these thoughts were making him nervous.
“Do you want to walk down to the river?” Tom asked. “We can sit in the park and watch the sun go down.” They went back into the house, putting their cups in the kitchen. Sandra got a light sweater even though it was warm. Into her purse she put a bottle of water and a small package of tissues. She went into the bathroom and got bug-repellant wipes out of her beach bag, just in case. Tom watched her with curiosity.
“We’re just going down to the park, not taking a trip to Coney Island,” he joked.
“You laugh, but I’m ready for anything.”
Not pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases,
she thought. But if they could avoid talking about that every single time they were together, they might learn a thing or two about each other, so she kept those thoughts to herself. There were other interesting topics to cover.
“I can see that,” Tom said. And she was right; it was cool down by the water, the mosquitoes were terrible, and he got thirsty and asked for the water. “I never get thirsty! I’m a guy!”
Tom talked about his sisters. Sandra told him she was frightened to meet his family. The idea that they were in Brooklyn and she had lived in Manhattan all her life was scary enough. They would have nothing in common
“My sisters will love you!” he said. Was that the truth? He wondered. They would probably hate her. His sisters were critical snobs. He couldn’t see them with Sandra at all, but he wasn’t going to say that. He would protect her from reality for as long as he could.
“The truth is that you don’t need to meet them until you are ready. Eventually, I will tell them the truth about not being the baby’s father. If they can’t accept that and be respectful, they don’t have to see the baby. This brings us to the next issue. Do you want to have more? Because I want kids. A lot of them,” Tom stated.
“I never thought about having children! This baby was a huge surprise. But I want it so badly; I guess I must want children.” Sandra was feeling very protective of her unborn baby at that point. Did she want competition for him or her? Possibly someone who would take all of his father’s love away? Jack and his real father suddenly entered her thoughts; Harold was Jack’s stepfather, a secret discovered after his death in documents stored in Jack’s desk. A chill went through her. History was repeating itself, only this baby’s life would have a better outcome than Jack’s did.
She thought of the HIV. Would her doctor dissuade her from getting pregnant again? It was something she hadn’t thought of. She didn’t bring it up because once again, she didn’t want to ruin the mood.
At dusk, they started walking back to Sandra’s apartment. Although they were silent, Tom held on firmly to Sandra’s hand, looking at her and smiling from time to time.
They arrived at her apartment. “I’m going to pull my car around back. Want to come with me?”
Sandra felt the flush move through her body as if she were on a rollercoaster ride. He was going to spend the night.
Blythe
I’
m having a bad financial month. When Jack was alive, I got used to the money he gave me. Two thousand dollars in cash every month. It was enough to cover my rent, electric bill, and food. He told me to save it but I never did. Now I have to pay all my bills with the paltry money I make from my job, which is next to nothing when you have to start living on it. I am a bartender at Prestige. It’s not prestigious, however. It’s a dive. Jack lived a block from Prestige. Just one block over from the opulent Madison Avenue lifestyle is a filthy alleyway and Prestige is right off the alley. Jack came in every night for a drink.