When the nurse finally called her in, she looked at Jason, who was tapping away on his laptop. “Do you want me to come with?” he asked.
He’d always come in for their ob-gyn appointments. Sometimes, after the sonograms, he’d trace the letters of whatever the favored names of the day were in the goo before he toweled it off her.
“That’s okay,” she said. “You just keep working.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER they were in a cab heading home. Dr. Sterling had pronounced her “healing beautifully” and sent her on her way with a sheaf of brochures. Though she had brought a list of questions, in the end she had not asked any, because she could feel him rushing (who was in the hurry now?) and also because in the hospital, every time she’d tried to bring up how she was truly feeling—untethered, as if in some ways her heart was not a part of her body anymore—he warned her against “ruminating.”
Jason’s phone rang. She could tell it was important because he picked up right away and spent several minutes speaking to one of his colleagues in the indecipherable jargon of his job. After he hung up, he turned to her. “So the doctor said everything is going all right?”
She had already given him a rundown of the checkup in the elevator. “Yep. All good.”
Jason paused. “So you think it’s okay if I go back to the office tomorrow? They’re really in crunch mode now.”
“I’m sorry my heart attack came at such an inconvenient time.”
“No one said that.” The cab lurched to a stop as a jaywalker, eyes glued to his phone, stepped into traffic. The pressure of the seatbelt sent a cascade of pain through Maribeth.
“I’m sorry. You’re right,” she said.
“So it’s okay if I go back to the office?”
No. It wasn’t okay. She hurt all over. She wasn’t ready to be left alone with her mother, with the kids. She was scared.
“Of course it is,” she said.
“Good.” When he smiled, his eyes crinkled and he looked genuinely happy, and somehow this made everything worse. “But I think we should probably get your mom to stay another week, until you’re completely better.”
She deflated even more. “Another week?”
“She’s helpful. In her way. Another pair of hands. And she’s, you know, free.”
She looked out the window. They were going home. She was doing fine. The doctor had just said so. Why, then, did she feel like weeping? Why did she want to burrow into Jason’s neck, to beg him not to go?
Jason kissed her on the temple. “I told you everything would work out. Another week or two and we’ll be back to normal.”
8
Her mother was thrilled to stay on. “I’m having such fun with you all.”
Maribeth forced a smile. Said thank you.
“And if I can keep you from spending any of your hard-earned money on babysitters, all the better. Even with insurance, I remember how the bills piled up with your father. And with you not working . . .”
“I’m still working, Mom,” she said. “I’m on leave.” The truth was, she wasn’t sure what she was on. Leave? Disability? She should probably call someone in HR.
“Not really full-time,” her mother said. “And Jason’s salary . . .”
Jason worked as the head archivist for a music library. It was his dream job—he’d relocated from San Francisco for it—but the pay was awful, at least by Manhattan standards. One time Maribeth had complained to her mother how she didn’t understand why a company would go through all the trouble to relocate someone only to pay him a barely livable salary. Ever since, her mother had acted as if she and Jason were a step away from welfare.
“You know,” her mother barreled on, “that was why I made sure your father left some of his money to you in his will. Three months before the stroke, almost like I knew.”
Maribeth kept smiling. It felt like her face was encased in plaster.
“I’d hoped you’d use that money to buy a nice house,” her mother finished. “Maybe in the suburbs, like Ellen Berman’s daughter.”
“The one with breast cancer?”
“You can’t blame that on the suburbs.”
“We don’t want to live in the suburbs, Mom.”
“Maybe you can work less, somehow. I’m sure Elizabeth would find a way. She’s always been so generous to you.”
“Thanks for making me sound like a charity case.”
“Oh, I don’t mean it like that. I just want you to slow down.” She paused, frowning. “I suppose I hoped you’d use all this as a wakeup call.”
“A wakeup call?”
“Herb Zucker had a heart attack, lost thirty pounds, and started meditating.”
“I should lose thirty pounds and start meditating?”
“No, you’ve always been too thin. But you should take a look at your life. Your priorities.”
Maribeth understood her mother was singing a version of her own sad song: the hamster wheel that was her life. But hearing the lament from her mother didn’t make her feel supported, only accused.
“My priorities are just fine,” she said.
“I just wouldn’t want you to go through this again,” her mother added.
“Me neither.”
Her mother leaned in close, as if to divulge a juicy secret. “Jason told me that it might be genetic.” She looked at Maribeth meaningfully. “So you can’t blame me.”
What a thing to say. It reminded Maribeth of when she and Jason had started the fertility treatments and her mother had been, oddly, almost gleeful. “It’s like I passed something to you after all,” she’d said. That this sentiment was both unwelcome and off base—the doctors never thought Maribeth had any medical issues related to her infertility aside from her “advanced maternal age”—never seemed to occur to her mother.