She Poured Out Her Heart (13 page)

“Eric.”

“Sorry. Don't throw your spoon, OK? It makes Mommy sad.”

Jane said nothing. This would be the pattern of the future. The two of them united in manly understanding, tiptoeing around her unreasonable fussy self. Robbie looked so much like Eric. Except that Robbie's hair was blond. Eric said he'd been a blond baby and that Robbie's hair would get darker, just as his had. And then, in time, fall out. Now that was a depressing thought. Was that depression? Was there a difference?

Eric poured himself a cup of coffee. He never had his coffee at home. He was making an effort. “There's this really good guy. A family practice guy.” He waited for Jane to react.

“I think I have enough doctors, thanks.”

“I'd like it if you'd just go talk to him. Maybe he could write you a prescription.”

“I'm not taking anything that would hurt the baby.”

“Do you think I'd let you? I've asked around, there are some perfectly safe drugs that might help.”

“Help what, exactly? And ask who, people who know me?” From Eric's irritated look, she saw that this was the case. She hated the idea of him communing with their medical friends, telling them how peevish and fumbling and out of it she was. “Thanks.”

“I wish,” he said sadly, “that you at least wanted to be happy.”

“Maybe I am happy. For me. I wish you didn't feel like you had to fix me.”

“Fix,” Robbie said. “Fix me!”

“Fine,” Eric said, giving up. “Be happy your way. Don't let me stop you.”

She thought how much of her marriage, her part in it, went back to her fear that he would realize he'd made a mistake in choosing her. That he had fallen in love with her on false pretenses.

S
he sat across from Dr. Cohen in the examining room. He had already gathered and assessed Jane's observable and measurable characteristics. Weight, height, allergies, the composition of her fluids. He believed, he said, in a holistic approach, and so there was this talking stuff. “I understand,” Dr. Cohen said, “that you might be here somewhat under protest. Is that right?” Smiling a twinkly smile to show Jane that he understood that she was a reluctant patient, and he didn't hold it against her. He was sixty? North of sixty? Gold, rimless glasses, a lot of lopsided curly gray-black hair. Maybe he was an old hippie, he'd recommend aromatherapy or herbal teas.

“No, but it was my husband's idea. I agreed to it.”

“To keep the peace.”

“Pretty much.” She tried to sound straightforward, unsurly. “Maybe he told you. He thinks I'm depressed.”

“It doesn't matter what he told me. You're my patient now, with all the rights and privileges thereof.” Jane gave him an inquiring look. “It means I won't share information with your husband.”

She nodded. At least that much was good. She tried shifting in her chair to get comfortable. She was starting to gain weight faster now, and while she wasn't showing yet, she felt bulky and slow.

“Before we talk about depression, what that is or isn't, why don't you tell me how you're feeling these days.”

“Extra super pregnant.”

“Are you having a hard time with this one?”

“I don't know. Is it supposed to be easy?”

“I'm pretty sure my wife would say no. We had three of our own.”

Jane looked around for pictures of them. But no, he'd have them in his office, not here. The same as Eric had his pictures of her and Robbie. “I'm uncomfortable. Tired. Normal, I guess. It's hard to catch up. Rest up. Our little boy is almost two.”

“Robbie. Your husband bragged on him up, down, and sideways.”

“Oh yes. Proud papa.” Small talk. She waited for him to do his doctor thing so she could oh white. Oh lovely pure nothing. Oh gratitude and whiteness and blessedness.

“Mrs. Nicholson?”

Her eyes opened. Dr. Cohen looked, something. Concerned. Blurry. “Hmm,” Jane said, because it was an easy sound to make.

“What happened just now?”

“Sorry. Fell asleep.”

“Do you have any history of epilepsy?”

That meant, seizure. Was that what they were? Jane shook her head.

“Let me get you some water.” He stood, went out into the hallway, and came back with a paper cup. “Here. Take your time.”

She drank. She took her time. “Are you all right?” Dr. Cohen asked. “Do you feel like talking?”

“Sure,” she said agreeably. She became aware of the everyday sounds of the office building rushing in, as if her ears had just been turned back on: footsteps in the hallway outside, an elevator chiming, voices. Dr. Cohen's big cloud of hair crinkling. “How long was I, whatever I was?”

“Less than a minute.”

“Do I have epilepsy?”

“I don't know. It's possible.”

“It doesn't feel like epilepsy,” she said, stubbornly. As if she knew all about it.

“Tell me what it feels like.”

“It feels . . . beautiful. Peaceful. More than that. I can't explain it right. Something exciting. A sacred feeling. Like my head turns into . . .” She might have said heaven, but settled for “. . . a cathedral.”

“And how long has this been going on?”

“Not long. A few weeks.” It seemed important that she explain and reassure him that it was no big medical deal. “It happens mostly when I'm tired. Stressed.” She couldn't keep herself from asking. “Did it look weird? Was I moving around or making sounds?”

“No, if it was a seizure, it's what we call an absence seizure. It's just what it sounds like. Someone blanks out, loses focus, then comes back to the present.”

She wasn't sure she wanted it to be a disease, something ordinary. “Do I have to have tests or something?”

“I'd like to hold off for now. Estrogen increases the electrical activity of the brain, did you know that? Let's see if you have the same problem once the baby's born.”

“It's not a problem,” Jane said, but softly, so that Dr. Cohen had to ask her to repeat it.

“It would be a problem if you were holding a baby. Driving a car.”

She shook her head. “It makes me happy.”

“How so?”

“I'm not there anymore. Anywhere.”

“I don't understand why that makes you happy.”

Jane shook her head again, but carefully, as if it were full of something that might spill.

“I wish you would try to tell me.”

A space of silence. Jane said, “Because I'm living the wrong life.” It was as if she hadn't known it until she said it.

“How is it wrong?”

“Not so much wrong.” She retreated. “But not always good at it. I mean, fall in love, get married, have kids? Everybody does it.” The doctor was only sitting there, watching her lurch from one incoherence to
another. She tried again. “Do you ever see people—patients—who aren't friends with their bodies? I don't mean, they think they're too fat or anything like that.”

“I see plenty of people who are ill, in pain, and they aren't on good terms with their bodies.”

“No,” Jane said. “This is different. I mean, feeling separate from your body. Being not really in it. I'm sorry, I'm not explaining anything very well.”

Dr. Cohen looked as if he was at least making an effort at understanding. “But we're always in our bodies.”

“I'm not. That's what happens. I get to leave.”

“And be nowhere.”

“Yes,” Jane said, aware that she was sounding unstable, or maybe just eccentric and comical, as if she'd claimed to be the reincarnation of an ancient Aztec princess. “You asked me to tell you what it feels like,” she reminded him.

“I did.” He shifted in his chair, rocking backward. The diplomas on his wall were all from New York State. Was anyone really from Atlanta? “OK, here are some possibilities. Pregnancy stress. Hormone overload. Some sort of neurological deficit or abnormal brain activity. Psychological issues. None of these conditions are mutually exclusive, that is, you might have some of them or all of them.”

Jane stayed silent. She was either sick or crazy or else just one of those broody females who were always at the mercy of their glands. She shouldn't have said anything.

“Or else,” Dr. Cohen continued, “and again, not mutually exclusive, that is, perhaps caused by one of the above, perhaps not, you're having a mystical experience. A connection with the absolute. Like Saint Teresa of Avila, or a Zen master.”

“Wow, you really are a holistic doctor.”

He laughed. “I try to keep an open mind.”

“Well . . . I'm not very religious,” Jane said.

“You did use the word sacred.”

“I guess I did.”
Sacred.
She didn't think she'd ever spoken the word out loud before in her life. “But I don't think I'm a saint, or a Zen master. That sounds a little grand. I mean, I could just have a brain tumor.”

“Exactly.” He seemed pleased, not at the brain tumor, maybe, but at her grasp of the way this might work. “Or epilepsy, or some other seizure disorder. Seizures have been associated with ecstatic feelings and religious visionaries throughout history.”

“It all sounds very complicated,” Jane said, though what she meant was, it was worrying.

“I'd like to keep monitoring you. Let's have you come in next month. No tests or medication for now, but you could keep a record of how often you have these, let's call them events. And it would be desirable if you didn't drive. And if you avoided getting overtired or stressed.”

Jane just looked at him. He shrugged. “I only said, it would be a good idea.”

Her appointment time was up. Jane could tell. Doctors, even the nice ones, were so intent on keeping to their schedule that they turned abrupt and twitchy and made conversation-ending statements. She stood to go. “What should I tell my husband?”

“Whatever you choose to tell him.” Dr. Cohen stood also. They shook hands. He really wasn't any taller than Jane, unless you took his hair into account.

“Can I tell him you said I wasn't depressed?”

“Let's talk about depression next time.”

A neighbor was watching Robbie, and on the way home Jane put aside mommy guilt for long enough to stop and get a sandwich at a take-out place and eat it at a picnic table next to the parking lot. It was March, and already there were hints of heavy, syrupy warmth in the air. Trees were in bud, and also the yellow arcs of forsythia, and other blooming things she did not know the names of. The baby would not be born until August. It was going to be a long, hot, pregnant summer.

She thought her brain was probably fine. The problem was always her heart, which they'd patched and shored up all those years ago, but had never been at home inside her.

The white room was the one place where she could be alone. That was all she really wanted.

The baby inside her fluttered. She was wrong. She was never truly alone.

When Eric asked her, as carefully as possible, how her appointment had been, Jane said she thought it had been helpful. Eric didn't push it any further than that. Jane tried smiling more often. And, as if cautioned, the white room remained closed to her, at least for now.

The following week, she got a call from Bonnie. “Hey, girlfriend.”

“Hey yourself.” Always a surprise when Bonnie called. Always some effort required for Jane to bring her energy level up a few notches so she didn't sound like a big drag. They weren't really that close anymore. Except that then, in a matter of minutes, they were. “Are you still the toast of the town?” Jane asked, aiming for sprightliness.

“More like just toast. How are you feeling?”

“Great. I'm having twin elephants. I wanted you to be the first to know.”

They talked for a time, catching up. It never took that long to fall back into the old dorm room griping. Bonnie said she was through with men, meaning, Jane guessed, she was between boyfriends. She said that men were no longer necessary for the perpetuation of the species, thanks to scientific advances in cryogenics and assisted fertilization, you know, the way they did things with bulls and racehorses. Jane said that the guys she knew were still hung up on doing things the old-fashioned way.

“Counterrevolutionaries,” Bonnie said. “Czarists. We'll smoke the last remnant of them out of the hills.” Then, “Listen, I've got a few days off coming up. I was thinking of a little Atlanta jaunt.”

“Oh.” Surprised. “Well, that's great. But you know, we're not a real fun vacation destination these days. Robbie, don't.” He was climbing the
arm of the sofa, trying to pull a lamp over onto his head. Jane scooped him up and deposited him back in the toy zone on the floor.

“I'm not coming to have fun. I'm coming to see you.”

“Thanks.” A suspicion lit up her head like an old-fashioned cartoon lightbulb. “Did Eric call you?”

Bonnie sighed. “He's worried about you.”