You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [79]
The heaters were out on the train and I pulled my coat tighter. I was grateful for the cold. It gave me something to focus on. It kept me awake. I watched as we passed through station after station, the blank-faced commuters waiting in the dark for their trains. No one spoke. There was only the sound of the rattling car.
I was early and found a café by the RER station. I stood at the bar and drank a coffee, but couldn’t face eating anything. The man standing next to me was smoking with a trembling hand. There was a beer on the bar in front of him. For a moment I thought I might order one too. It had been a long time since I’d had a drink so early in the morning. I knew Marie would’ve been disappointed to smell alcohol on my breath. I ordered another coffee and waited.
When it was time, I paid the barman, walked up the street, and found her waiting by the taxi stand. When she saw me she pushed herself off the wall. We stood looking at each other, the street between us, waiting for the light to change, cars speeding by. I crossed and held her to me, my lips against her hair. It was the first time we’d touched in a public place.
In the taxi she gave the driver the address. We sat holding hands. Marie looked out her window and I looked out mine.
At the hospital, I paid the driver. The streetlights flickered off as the taxi drove away.
Not speaking, we walked along the straight stone hallways. The sound of our footsteps echoed off the stone walls and the vaulted cathedral ceilings. In the clinic there were green plastic chairs and Formica tables. There were polished floors and a nurses’ station encased in glass.
They took us after an hour and put us in a room with another couple. The woman was on her side, her back to us, arms around her belly, in a black recliner in the corner. The man sat next to her and nodded at me. The nurse touched the woman’s arm.
Marie and I sat at a table in the center of the room. “O.K.,” she said squeezing my hand. “It’s going to be fine, you’ll see.”
The nurse brought a small cup with the pills inside. Marie took them with water and went to the bathroom to change her clothes.
When she came back she wore a hooded IFS sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants “to hide the diaper,” she said rolling her eyes.
We sat together reading magazines and waited and when we heard crying we locked eyes and didn’t look away. Marie leaned forward and whispered to me across the table, “It won’t be like that for me.”
“It’s O.K. if it is,” I said.
“But it won’t be,” she promised, squeezing my hand, looking directly into my eyes. She was so sure of herself. She put her magazine away and began to read her copy of The Waves, underlining for Mia as she went.
They brought her some food but she refused to eat. I ate the crackers.
I watched her try to read and imagined a different life, where at the end of the day we’d have a child rather than be rid of one. Where I’d come home joyful instead of unburdened.
From time to time Marie would look up at me from her homework and smile. I imagined her sitting at our kitchen table, our baby asleep in the other room.
When the pain began she clenched her jaw. I touched her hand. She looked at me and I felt, again, what it was to be loved like that, and not to love in return. Soon she let go of my hand, stood up and walked awkwardly to the bathroom.
I watched the door close behind her. I heard the bolt slide into place.
I sat at the table beneath the fluorescent light and listened to it hum. Then I heard the toilet flush, the deep groaning of liquid being sucked down into the bowels of the building.
When she came out she was dressed in her street clothes. She had her bag over her shoulder. None of it was invention or artifice. Whatever lies she’d told me made no difference. As I watched her walk toward me I wanted to protect her. Whatever pain she’d endured she’d looked at me steadily, barely winced, and refused any weakness.
“That’s it,” she said. “You call the nurse.”
They took Marie’s temperature. Listened