Garden of Lies (26 page)

Central Park. Not exactly overlooking the park, but near enough to watch the droves of pretty

girls in shorts and halter tops walk by in the summertime.

What was it that fag real-estate agent had called it? A love nest? Sickening. But he’d often

thought of it since, and it was true in a way. The lobby had just been modernized, but the

apartments still had some Art Nouveau detail. Like the gracefully curved bronze ceiling fixture

with its milk-glass shades. And the copper panels with women’s profiles on either side of the

fireplace mantel. He’d hung a Mucha print over it, so people would know he understood the

period, that he wasn’t some cultural illiterate.

But that was about it. His books and other stuff were still mostly in cartons, stacked neatly

against the wall. Except the hi-fi, of course. What was seduction without music? The Eames chair

Rachel was sitting in had been left by the former tenant, another fag, who’d also sold him the

Navaho rug in the center of the parquet floor.

Then it came to him why he’d never unpacked. Marking time here, that’s what he’d been

doing. Waiting for his real move.

And now this bitch was going to try to hold him up.

“What do you want?” he asked sullenly.

“I want an abortion.” Cold, dead. “And I want you to do it.”

David froze. What? What had she just said? He felt the bottle slipping from his grasp. His

mind, too, slipping. Like the time he’d run smack into the side of Cuyler Hall in the dark, reeling

back from Houseparties. A flash of crimson behind his eyes. Then pain, mushrooming, up his

neck, unfolding in dull pounding waves through his skull.

Now the awfulness of her words, coming back to him, exploding inside his head.

[147] Jesus, she couldn’t be serious.

Cool it,
he told himself. He had to stay calm, on top of things. But Christ, his head hurt. How

the hell could he manage this?

“Okay,” he said. In his mind he pictured himself wearing his white coat with the blue plastic

I.D. that read
David Sloane, M.D.
Yeah, that made it easier. He felt his breathing slow. “You

made the right decision. You’ll see, it’s for the best. And like I told you, I have every intention of

seeing this through with you. Steve Kelleher just happens to be the best OB man I know. Why

don’t I give him a call right now, see if he—” He was already up, crossing the room, reaching for

the phone.

“No, David.”

“Look, I know you don’t want this to get around. But he’s very discreet.”

“That’s not it. I don’t care how good he is, or how discreet. It’s you I want.” Again, that quiet,

firm tone.

Jesus, now he was sweating, like he used to watching his old man sliding into a binge, waiting

for the other shoe to drop.
You can stay under that bed as long as you want, Davey. All night if

you like. But sooner or later you’re gonna hafta come out, and I’ll be waitin’ for you when you

do. Then I’m gonna show you what God gave me this good right hand for.

Sure, you want me,
he thought.
Like Uncle Sam would if I didn’t stay a step ahead all the time.

Like the Grim Reaper. Like my old man.

“You’re drunk,” he told her.

She laughed then, just once, a hollow sound, like a lonesome note on a bagpipe. “I wish I were.

Honest to God I do.”

“Rachel, listen ...”

“No,
you
listen.” She stood up, eyes blazing, the hurt in them so bright he had to look away.

“You said it would be as easy as the dentist, like pulling a tooth. I just want you to—” her voice

broke a little, then steadied, “to know, that’s all. What it is really like. What we are really doing.”

David suddenly was remembering his father kicking the shit out of his mother.
Not the baby,

Hal,
she was screaming.
Please, not the baby.
At the time, he hadn’t understood, but later he did.

She’d been three months pregnant, and she lost the baby.

Shit, why was she making him remember all that? And his [148] headache, Christ, he needed

some Tylenol, or maybe something stronger.

Then anger swept through him, taking hold of him, making him stagger a little.

“You’re out of your fucking mind, babe. How do I even know it’s my kid? How do I know

how many guys you been doing it with?” He heard the viciousness in his voice, and a part of him,

some part that was standing back from all this, was shocked to realize he sounded just like the old

man.

He saw her turn pale, the color of candle wax, and for a moment he thought she might pass out.

But she just held on, tightly gripping the chair. Jesus, he had to give it to her. She was hanging in

there.

Seeing the anguish on her face, he felt a moment’s shame. She was not, he realized, doing this

to get back at him. He had a moment’s crazy urge to take her in his arms, tell her anything she

wanted to hear.

“It’s yours,” she said. “Ours. This baby—or whatever you want to call it—we made it together.

I didn’t want it any more than you did, but now it’s a fact. So going for an abortion by myself, as

if it were some minor procedure, well ... it would cheapen everything. How I feel about myself,

life, even about being a doctor. If this little new life doesn’t matter, then what does? So, David, it

has to be this way. I’ve thought about it, and it’s the
only
way. For me. If I’m to live with it.”

Rachel sat back, hands clenched in her lap, thinking how David probably hated her right now,

for wreaking some kind of twisted vengeance on him.

When you got down to it, though, it didn’t really matter what he believed. Whatever they had

been to each other (and she knew now it was far less than she had imagined) was over. Nothing

could ever again exist between them.

But first, they still had to see this through, she and David. Their baby deserved that much. A

decent burial, not an unmarked grave with no one to mourn its brief life and nothing to mark its

passing.

No, she would not anesthetize this, pretend it was nothing. Lie back while some stranger

humming along to the Muzak scraped her baby out like offal from a gutted fish. She felt shame,

and David had to also; or afterwards, how could she forgive herself?

[149] But she saw now how much she had underestimated David. There was something about

him like a wild animal with its leg caught in a steel trap—a creature who knew that the only way

out was to chew the leg off. He stood there at the far end of the living room, his handsome face

haggard, his normally perfect, blow-dried hair disheveled in damp tangles that had dribbled dark

spots of wetness over the collar and shoulders of his Lacoste shirt.

The expression on his face—she had never seen it on him before. And then it dawned on her:

He’s scared shitless.

“No.” His mouth formed the word before the cracked sound of his voice emerged. “It’s ...

obscene. You must be crazy to think I would do that to my own—” He broke off, choking himself

back.

“Your own what, David?”
Say it, dammit, at least say it.

“Nothing.” He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He had never felt so

panicky, not even during the most life-threatening surgery. “Look, you can just forget about it,

this macabre little scheme of yours. I’m an M.D., not a fucking shrink. That’s what you need,

baby. Yeah. You’ve really gone over the edge this time.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But that doesn’t change anything. We’re still in this together, one way or

another.”

“What do you mean?” His eyes were narrowed, suspicious.

“I mean that if you won’t perform the abortion, there won’t be one. I’ll have the baby.”

“Are you
threatening
me?”

“No.” And she meant that too. “I’m just telling you what’s possible for me. What choices I can

live with. Having your friend Keileher do a nice neat D and C on me isn’t one of them.”

Rachel felt cold, and thought this was what being dead would be like if you could feel it. She

felt scared too.

She looked at David, and thought:
You’re not half the man my father is. If he were in your

place, he would not have done this to my mother. He would not have made her suffer like this.

Now David was backing away, blindly, frantically. His foot caught one leg of a bar stool, and it

toppled over, thudding onto the floor. He bent to pick it up, his long frame moving in jerks like an

angled crane.

Then he was straightening, staring at her with wild eyes, white [150] rims showing all the way

around his irises. He looked as if he had realized he could chew his leg off and he’d still be just as

hopelessly trapped.

David sagged against some cartons, and closed his eyes, his face bleached of color.

“All right,” he said. “Dammit, you win. But I don’t know just what it is you think you’re

getting out of this obscene little horror show of yours. I hope
you
do. I hope to Christ you do.”

Rachel felt very heavy, her head spinning. She
was
drunk. She just hadn’t realized it before.

She had won. She was supposed to feel good, triumphant at least. But all she felt was this cold,

dead numbness inside. The important thing now, she realized, was just to hang on, get through

this one way or another.

The next hour was a blur.

David, on the phone with Kelleher, explaining in a low tight voice, asking for the key to his

office. Then their leaving, the silent ride down in the elevator. Outside, rain on her face, pricking

her scalp. Cold. She kept shivering, even in the overheated taxi.

Only when they arrived at Kelleher’s office, a half-number address tucked alongside an ivy-

covered brownstone off lower Fifth Avenue, did what they were doing pierce her like a knife.

When David unlocked the door and flipped on the lights, when she saw the bright waiting room

with its cozy furniture and Currier and Ives prints, and the Christmas tree on a table in the corner

decorated with wooden angels and tartan bows.

I’ll never see my baby. I’ll never hold it in my arms.

Then the examining room, pretty pastel curtains, a border of storks stenciled around the ceiling.

And pictures. Hundreds of them it seemed. Snapshots. Stuck up on a big bulletin board with

colored pushpins. Pictures of all the babies Kelleher had delivered.

A cry rose in her, blocking her windpipe so for an instant she couldn’t breathe. She was being

cheated, and worse, she was doing it to herself. The room blurred in a wash of tears.

I can’t fall apart now,
she thought.
Later. When it’s over. But, oh dear God, I know I’ll never

stop seeing them. All those babies. Those sweet little babies.

There was a little curtained-off alcove at one end of the [151] examining room, and a soft

cotton gown folded on the white cane chair in the corner. Rachel changed as quickly as she could,

but her hands were trembling; her fingers, as she fumbled with the buttons on her dress, felt like

sticks of wood.

A full-length mirror was screwed into the wall opposite the chair. Dressed now in the flimsy

gown that tied in back, Rachel stood still a moment, examining her reflection. She saw a face that

wasn’t hers, drawn and ghastly white, with eyes sunken like thumb-print impressions in a crude

clay sculpture. Even her body seemed a stranger’s, breasts heavy, swollen, the dark nipples

visible through the thin cotton. Her stomach gently rounded, and smooth on either side where her

pelvis had jutted. She brought her hands to her belly, stroking it tenderly, eyes filming over with

fresh tears.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

The cold, dead feeling was gone, and a pain blazed in her chest.
I won’t forget you, baby.

David was ready, Rachel saw, when she emerged from behind the curtain. Scrubbed, gloved,

the instruments laid out on a metal tray.

She hiked herself up onto the business end of the examining table, feeling its paper covering

cold and stiff against her bare behind, reminding her of her mother, oddly enough.
You be sure,

extra sure, to cover the lid before you sit down. You just don’t know the kind of germs you can

catch in public bathrooms.

Rachel was torn between a sob, and an insane urge to giggle. She kept her eyes carefully

averted from David’s. If she looked at him, if she looked at what he was holding now in his right

hand, she might scream or go crazy.

“It’s not too late.” David’s voice floated past her ear. “We don’t have to go through with it. I

can call Steve back, tell him to come over.”

His words shocking her back to reason, as if a bucket of icy water had been dashed over her.

“No,” she said. “Do it.”

Spine held stiff as a yardstick, she lowered herself onto her back, and forced her shivering legs

apart. Now the cold shock of the stirrups against her bare feet. Her flesh shrank in anticipation of

David’s touch.

[152] But when Rachel looked down the tunnel of her hiked legs and saw what was coming,

she very nearly changed her mind.

David. His face hovering between the peaks of her knees like a ghost moon in a cold sky, light

flashing off the steel instrument in his hand. A chilling premonition swept over her:
It’s like a

marriage, isn’t it? We’ll be bound by this the rest of our lives.