Mercy Street(25)

“Isabelle has a boyfriend. Logan,” Phil said with wry distaste. “I am unprepared.”

“How is that possible? You’ve been worrying about this since she was in diapers.” Back then he’d played it for laughs: his reflexive mistrust of male children, an entire generation of infants with designs on his daughter’s virtue. Joking, but not really. It was a quirk of male psychology Claudia would never understand, a weird oedipal protectiveness she found slightly creepy. But what did she know? She’d never had a father.

“He’s two years older,” Phil said. “I find that ominous.”

“You don’t like Logan?”

“Haven’t met him. No one has. Logan is a mythical whatever. A Sasquatch.”

“Loch Ness monster,” said Claudia. “Jersey devil.”

“Funny you should say. He does go to Princeton.”

“That doesn’t sound ominous.”

“That’s what Joy says. I’m lucky: the girls tell her everything. I’m happier that way. The less I know.” He took a pair of reading glasses from his pocket.

“Oh ho! When did this happen?”

“It’s been happening. Joy has been reading menus to me for two years.” Phil pondered the special, a brisket plate. “Talk about yourself. Wasn’t there a boyfriend? His name escapes me.”

“That’s understandable,” she said. Boyfriend was an overstatement. Stuart was an e-boyfriend. They were two moderately attractive divorced people of comparable age and educational level, living in a twenty-mile radius, because those were the boxes they’d checked. The internet provided a limitless supply of such men, pleasant strangers Claudia could plausibly date for six to twelve months.

“Stuart,” she said, “but never mind. I’ve been thinking lately that I’m done.”

“Done as in done?”

“Done as in, they can retire my number. I’m forty-three years old. At a certain point, dating becomes preposterous.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

“Believe it. Now it’s all repeats. Every guy reminds me of someone I’ve already dated.”

“But not me.”

“You are singular,” she agreed. “There will never be another.”

It was true: they’d been young together. Back then Phil had a full beard and a nimbus of curly hair—packing material, she thought, to protect his outsized brain. Now he had life insurance and acid reflux and a spreading bald spot, yarmulke-sized, on top of his head. Claudia knew, in a factual way, that they’d once shared a bed, that they’d seen each other naked, but she had no memory of it. Mainly she remembered dinners. After their divorce she’d reverted to old habits, lazy meals of toast or cheese and crackers, but occasionally she still ate with Phil, in dreams.

“How does Stuart feel about this?”

“Stuart has not been consulted.”

Phil studied her. He had a way of scrutinizing a person. When they first met, in college, she’d found it unnerving. It seemed, then, that he was the first person who’d ever really looked at her.

“Claudia, are you sleeping?”

“Right now?”

“In general.”

“I sleep enough.” This was a blatant lie. But talking about her insomnia made her anxious—which, in the end, made it harder to sleep.

“You need to get away,” Phil said. “When’s the last time you took a vacation?”

“I’m going up to Maine next weekend. To check on my mom’s place.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind.” He signaled the waitress. “You can’t keep this up, you know. That job is killing you. I don’t know how you can work there.”

It was tiring to have these conversations.

“Look,” Phil said. “I’m on your side. You know I have no problem with abortion, assuming there’s a good reason.”

“There’s always a reason,” she said. “Define good.”

The reasons were many and varied. Occasionally a patient would volunteer hers, as though trying to convince herself.

My son is autistic and day care won’t take him. I can’t handle another kid.

I got fired. Evicted. I got into law school.

I’m afraid to go off my meds.

I just need to finish (high school, chemo, probation. My PhD. My tour of duty.)

My mother would never forgive me.

I want a different kind of life.

“Last summer we had a call on the hotline,” she said. “A 603 number, so New Hampshire. She said that if her ex found out she was pregnant, he’d come to her house and shoot her kids.”

Phil looked up from the menu.

To the list of reasons, add another: I must escape this monster, raise the drawbridge, bar the door. If I bear his child I will never be free of him; he will take up residence in my life.

“It’s possible she was delusional, or a compulsive liar. Honestly, I have no idea. All I know is what she told me.” Out of the corner of her eye Claudia saw, at last, a waitress approaching their table. “The point is, what’s a good reason? Who gets to decide?”

Phil ordered the brisket.

IT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE THEY’D EVER BEEN MARRIED. CLAUDIA’S recollections of that time were like blurred photocopies, memories of memories of memories.