Read Online As Good as Dead by Elizabeth Evans - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elizabeth Evans
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the kitchen table and put my feet on an upturned laundry basket.
“So I can be with my girl while I make her a cup of tea,” he said.
Three months later, right after we learned that my tenure bid had succeeded, I bought two pregnancy tests at the Safeway grocery near our house. I had intended to take the tests home, but even before the clerk—with a wink!—gave me the sales tape, I knew that I couldn’t bear the wait, and I headed straight to the store’s fluorescent-lit women’s room and locked myself into a beige stall.
Positive, according to “the urine stream.” I tore open the second test. Positive again.
I ran to the car. I was so wound up, so eager to get home and tell Will, that when I went to pull out of the Safeway parking lot and onto Broadway, to my shame and horror, I came within inches of hitting a teenage boy on a bicycle. Where had he even come from? I had not seen him until he was right in front of me, his face beneath his baseball cap pale with fury and fear as he swerved out of the way of my screeching, braking car! “Sorry! Sorry!” I called. I rolled down my window so that he’d hear. “So sorry!”
A warning: You slow down, Charlotte! You take care, lucky girl! That dear, angry boy. I might have had a child about his age. A boy whose voice was starting to break.
Will already was at the house when I arrived, and, after I told him the result of the pregnancy tests, we had a tomato juice toast with the pair of champagne flutes that someone had given us for a wedding gift. After the toast, we stood in the kitchen, holding each other. I stroked my hands down the back of Will’s starched and ironed white shirt. The cloth seemed like the ideal expression of smooth and cool. I felt blissfully happy.
“Remember, though, Charlotte”—he set his hands on my shoulders and stepped away from me and fixed his eyes on mine—“ you’re the most important thing in the world to me. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you .”
I smiled and nodded. Will, I was sure, would be fine if anything ever happened to me, but I appreciated his saying otherwise.
That spring—such a contented, joyful time—I was not only pregnant but in the glory days of starting a new book of my own and helping a talented graduate student with her thesis manuscript. I did not mind the morning sickness. How could I, given what it meant? At nine weeks, I went in for a sonogram and saw the tiny cloud of tissue that the tech assured me was the baby. I heard its heartbeat, and, all day long, after my appointment, I called up that sweet sound. Then, two weeks later, during the graduate workshop, I started having cramps. The cramps were bad enough that I broke out in a sweat. I stopped in the middle of what I was saying—something about double-voicing in the work of Henry James—and apologized. “I’m sorry, I seem to be sick,” I said and headed out into the hall.
The young woman whose thesis I’d been working on came after me and said that she could drive me home. I didn’t argue. By the time we got to her car, I was experiencing an urge to push. I did not know that this could happen to a person undergoing a miscarriage but felt certain that pushing could not be right. While the student drove, I telephoned the doctor’s office, which advised me to head to the emergency room at the university hospital, so we turned around.
A few hours and quite a few tests later—Will was with me by then—the doctors confirmed that I had miscarried.
No one ever had talked to me about what it was like to have a miscarriage. I was heart-broken, of course, but also unnerved at how long the bleeding continued. For days, I expelled pieces of bloody tissue—a couple as large as a deck of cards. I’d had no idea.
At the follow-up exam, my curly-haired doctor said, “Not to get discouraged!”
Will and I waited two months. Again, I quickly became pregnant. This time, when I went in for the sonogram, I made sure
“So I can be with my girl while I make her a cup of tea,” he said.
Three months later, right after we learned that my tenure bid had succeeded, I bought two pregnancy tests at the Safeway grocery near our house. I had intended to take the tests home, but even before the clerk—with a wink!—gave me the sales tape, I knew that I couldn’t bear the wait, and I headed straight to the store’s fluorescent-lit women’s room and locked myself into a beige stall.
Positive, according to “the urine stream.” I tore open the second test. Positive again.
I ran to the car. I was so wound up, so eager to get home and tell Will, that when I went to pull out of the Safeway parking lot and onto Broadway, to my shame and horror, I came within inches of hitting a teenage boy on a bicycle. Where had he even come from? I had not seen him until he was right in front of me, his face beneath his baseball cap pale with fury and fear as he swerved out of the way of my screeching, braking car! “Sorry! Sorry!” I called. I rolled down my window so that he’d hear. “So sorry!”
A warning: You slow down, Charlotte! You take care, lucky girl! That dear, angry boy. I might have had a child about his age. A boy whose voice was starting to break.
Will already was at the house when I arrived, and, after I told him the result of the pregnancy tests, we had a tomato juice toast with the pair of champagne flutes that someone had given us for a wedding gift. After the toast, we stood in the kitchen, holding each other. I stroked my hands down the back of Will’s starched and ironed white shirt. The cloth seemed like the ideal expression of smooth and cool. I felt blissfully happy.
“Remember, though, Charlotte”—he set his hands on my shoulders and stepped away from me and fixed his eyes on mine—“ you’re the most important thing in the world to me. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you .”
I smiled and nodded. Will, I was sure, would be fine if anything ever happened to me, but I appreciated his saying otherwise.
That spring—such a contented, joyful time—I was not only pregnant but in the glory days of starting a new book of my own and helping a talented graduate student with her thesis manuscript. I did not mind the morning sickness. How could I, given what it meant? At nine weeks, I went in for a sonogram and saw the tiny cloud of tissue that the tech assured me was the baby. I heard its heartbeat, and, all day long, after my appointment, I called up that sweet sound. Then, two weeks later, during the graduate workshop, I started having cramps. The cramps were bad enough that I broke out in a sweat. I stopped in the middle of what I was saying—something about double-voicing in the work of Henry James—and apologized. “I’m sorry, I seem to be sick,” I said and headed out into the hall.
The young woman whose thesis I’d been working on came after me and said that she could drive me home. I didn’t argue. By the time we got to her car, I was experiencing an urge to push. I did not know that this could happen to a person undergoing a miscarriage but felt certain that pushing could not be right. While the student drove, I telephoned the doctor’s office, which advised me to head to the emergency room at the university hospital, so we turned around.
A few hours and quite a few tests later—Will was with me by then—the doctors confirmed that I had miscarried.
No one ever had talked to me about what it was like to have a miscarriage. I was heart-broken, of course, but also unnerved at how long the bleeding continued. For days, I expelled pieces of bloody tissue—a couple as large as a deck of cards. I’d had no idea.
At the follow-up exam, my curly-haired doctor said, “Not to get discouraged!”
Will and I waited two months. Again, I quickly became pregnant. This time, when I went in for the sonogram, I made sure
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