If You Only Knew(38)

“Rachel? Oh, it is you! How are you?”

My heart sinks. It’s Mrs. Donovan, who lived next door to us when I was a kid. It’s not that I don’t like her; it’s just that I’m here for such nasty purposes. I try to get up, but she’s standing too close, and I don’t want to knock her over. “Mrs. Donovan! Hi.” I smile up at her, sort of, and squeeze her free hand. The other holds her cane and a huge quilted purse that looks like it could hold an eight-year-old child.

“How are those beautiful girls of yours?” she asks.

“They’re great,” I tell her. “Want to see a picture?” I pull out my phone, but she waves it away.

“I hate those cell phone thingies,” she says. “Do you have a real photo?”

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you here, dear? You’re not sick, are you?”

I better not be. “Oh, just a checkup. How about you?”

“I have the worst itching!” she crows. “And discharge! In the strangest place, too!”

Oh, God. Maybe she has an STD, too. I try to keep my face from morphing into a silent scream of horror, but I have no idea if it’s working.

“Look,” she says, pulling up her World’s Best Grandma T-shirt. “Look at my belly button. See that oozing?”

I try not to gag. First of all, it’s a wrinkly, elephantine stomach, and it’s about an inch from my face. Secondly, she’s got such an outie that it looks like a snout, like some sort of alien pig baby is trying to push its way out of her.

And yes, there’s discharge.

“I’ve been using these hemorrhoid wipes on it,” she continues in that blithely unselfconscious way old people sometimes have when discussing hideous medical issues. “But it’s just getting worse. It’s thicker now, and if I squeeze—”

“Rachel Carver?” A nurse opens the door and I fly across the room.

“Good luck, Mrs. Donovan!” I call over my shoulder.

A few minutes later, I’m in my johnny coat, waiting for the doctor to come in. I shaved my legs for this appointment. Definitely want to make a good impression as a cuckolded wife. I’ve seen Dr. Ramanian for about ten years. I feel like we’re almost friends, in that sense that she’s seen parts of me I’ve never seen, knew about my struggles to get pregnant and came to see the girls when they were in the hospital, just because she’s nice. I always wanted to ask her out for coffee or a drink, but that effortless way some people (like Jenny) have of making friends has always eluded me, and now the window has shut. I can’t just say, “Hey, about nine, ten years ago, I meant to ask you if you wanted to be friends, but I couldn’t get the words out. How about now? Does now work?”

A brisk knock comes on the door. “Come in,” I say.

“Hello, Rachel,” she says, walking in, eyes on my chart. “How are you?”

“Fine, thanks, how are you?” I answer automatically.

“Very good. What can I do for you today?”

I practiced what I’d say in the car ride over here, but my heart pounds against my ribs like a bird trying to get out of a house. I clear my throat. “I seem to need an STD panel,” I manage to say, and I don’t cry, though my freshly shaven and moisturized legs are shaking.

Dr. Ramanian’s face changes, melting in sympathy. Not really a mystery who cheated, I guess. “All right, then,” she says. “Let’s check you out.”

So I scootch onto the exam table and let her probe my cervix and try to breathe deeply. I’m brave, after all. I had triplets. During my infertility workups, I’ve been probed and prodded and squished a hundred times.

There never was anything wrong with me, by the way. Adam has a low sperm count. Yet I was the one who had to take fertility drugs so the swimmers he did have had a better chance to home in on something.

Dr. Ramanian is fast and gentle and tells me to sit up. She draws blood herself, and gives me a cup to pee in. “It won’t take long to get the results,” she says. “I’ll call you myself.”

“Thank you,” I say briskly, all New Rachel as I pull on my clothes without even waiting for her to leave. “I appreciate that.”

Because Old Rachel really couldn’t take this. Old Rachel would be sobbing on this woman’s shoulder.

New Rachel is thinking about how satisfying it would be to kill her husband right about now.

Jenny

When I was eleven and Rachel was fourteen, our father was shot and killed when two teenagers robbed the Auto-Mart.

Dad’s guilty pleasure was those nasty frozen drinks guaranteed to rot your teeth. Hey. Gotta relax somehow, right? We always got a kick out of it, our father, the high priest of flossing, stopping in a 7-Eleven or a Stewart’s for a drink made of sugar, corn syrup and God knows what else.

On the night of July 11, Dad decided he had to have a Green Watermelon Brain Freeze, his favorite flavor. The video surveillance showed him at the self-serve slushie counter, filling a barrel-sized foam cup. At the same time he was thus engrossed, two boys came in, nylon stockings over their faces. Jittery, nervous, druggies...the worst kind of criminal. They pointed a gun at the clerk and ordered him to open the safe.

My father capped his drink, still oblivious, and reached for his wallet, his last act on this earth, because that was when the clerk reached for his own shotgun, the kids fired, the clerk fired, and Dad, who stood there with his hands up, was dead.