Heartbeat (15 page)

“They must be very important to you.”

“They are. They're the best thing in my life.” He smiled at Adrian, admiring her as she put on more suntan oil. She looked happier than she had when he'd run into her before, and somehow more peaceful, but she still seemed very quiet. He wondered if she was always like that, or if she was just a little shy with strangers.

“You don't have kids, do you?” He assumed she hadn't, because he had never seen any with her, and she hadn't mentioned it, and she would have surely said something if she had children. Most people in the complex didn't. There were a few couples with newborns, but usually they moved out and bought larger homes after they had babies.

“No.” She seemed to hesitate and he looked at her, wondering if there was more to the story. “No, we don't. I …we …we've both been pretty busy working.”

He nodded, wondering what it would really be like to be friends with her. He hadn't been friends with a woman in a purely platonic way in a very long time, and in an odd way, there were times when she reminded him of Leslie. She had the same kind of seriousness and intensity, the same decent values about many things. And Bill found himself wondering more than once if he would like her husband. Maybe they could all be friends. All he had to do was forget that he thought she was sensational-looking and had a really sexy body.

He forced himself to look into her eyes then and discuss her future in the newsroom. It was one way to forget how she looked in her bathing suit, and the fact that he would have given anything to lean over and kiss her.

“When is your husband coming back?” he asked conversationally, and she looked startled by the question. She hadn't known that Bill knew he was gone. Maybe she'd said something, she thought, as she wondered.

“Pretty soon,” she said quietly. “He's in Chicago.”

And when he came back, they were going to try and settle, once and for all, the matter of their marriage. It was no small thing, and she was both dreading his return and looking forward to it. She was dying to see him, but she was also dreading telling him that she had had no change of heart about the baby. The baby was part of her now, and it was going to stay that way, until it was born. And she knew Steven wasn't going to be happy to hear it.

She heard from Steven finally the second Monday in June, at nine o'clock, almost the moment she got to the office. Her secretary said he was on the line, and she pounced on it. She had waited almost a month for his call, and there were tears in her eyes when she heard his voice, she was so happy. But he didn't sound friendly, He asked how she was, and seemed to be asking pointedly about her health. She knew what he wanted to know and she decided to face it squarely.

“Steven, I'm still pregnant, and I'm going to stay that way.”

“I thought so,” and then, “I'm sorry to hear that.” It was a cruel thing for him to say but it was honest. “You haven't changed your mind, then?”

She shook her head as the tears spilled from her eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks. “No, I haven't. But I'd love to see you.”

“I don't think that's such a good idea. It'll just confuse both of us.” Why was he so afraid of her? Why was he doing this? She still didn't understand it.

“What's a little confusion between friends?” She laughed through her tears, and tried to keep things light, but they just weren't.

“I'll move my things out in the next few weeks. I'll start looking for an apartment.”

“Why? Why are you doing this? Why don't you come home for a while? Just try it.” They had never had a problem getting along, never had fights, never had a problem adjusting when they were first married. Just this. Their baby. And suddenly it was all over.

“There's no point torturing ourselves, Adrian. You've made your decision, now let's just do our best to pick up the pieces and move on.” He acted as though she had betrayed him, as though the fault was all hers and he had been decent and reasonable. She wondered if he was actually going to call a lawyer. “What do you want to do about the condo?” Their town house? What did he mean, what did she want to do with it? She was going to live there while she had their baby.

“I was planning to live there, do you have any objection?”

“Not now. But I will eventually. We should both get our money out of it, and then we can each buy something else, unless you want to buy my half from me,” but they both knew she couldn't afford it.

“How soon do you want me to move?” He was putting her out on the street, and all because she was pregnant.

“There's no rush. I'll let you know if I want to make any moves in that direction. For the moment, I just want to rent.” How nice. How wonderful for him. She felt sick as she listened to him. There was no fooling herself anymore. He was leaving her. It was over.
Unless
afterward …after the baby was born, he came back and realized how wrong he had been. There was always some small hope of that. She wouldn't believe he was really gone until he had seen their baby and then told her he didn't want it. She was willing to wait until then, no matter how neurotic he got in the meantime. And even if he divorced her, they could always get remarried later.

“Do whatever you want,” she said calmly.

“I'll be by to get my things this weekend.” In the end, he came the following week because he'd had the flu, and Adrian watched mournfully as he packed everything he owned into boxes.

It took him hours to pack it all, and he had rented a small truck that he'd brought with him, and a friend from the office to help him load it. And it was embarrassing for her just being there. She had been so happy to see him at first, but he had been cool and maintained his distance.

She went out for the afternoon when they loaded the truck and she just stayed in her car and drove so she didn't have to watch, or say good-bye to him again. She couldn't stand the pain of it anymore, and he seemed anxious to avoid her.

She went home after six o'clock, and she saw that the truck was gone. She let herself in, and her breath caught as she looked around. When he had said he was going to “take everything,” he had meant it. He had taken everything that was technically his, everything he had owned before, and everything he had paid for, or given her even some of the money for, since they'd been married. She started to cry without meaning to. The couch and chairs were gone, the cocktail table,the stereo, the breakfast table, the kitchen chairs, every single thing that had once hung on the walls. There was not a single chair in the living room, and when she went upstairs the only thing left in the bedroom was their bed. All her clothes from the chest of drawers had been carefully folded and put in boxes. The chest itself was gone, as were all the lamps and the comfortable leather contour chair. All his toys and gadgets and devices. She no longer owned a television set, and when she went into the bathroom to blow her nose, she found that he had even taken her toothbrush. She started to laugh at the absurdity of it then. It was insane. He had taken everything. She had nothing left. It was all gone. All she had left was her bed and her clothes, the living room rug, a few odds and ends, which he'd carefully left on the floor, and the set of china she'd had when they were married, most of which was now broken.

There had been no discussion, no argument, no conversation about what belonged to whom, or who wanted what. He had simply taken all of it, because he had paid for most of it, and because he felt it was his and he had a right to. As she walked through the downstairs rooms again, she reached into the refrigerator for something to drink, and found that he had taken all the sodas. She started to laugh again then. There was nothing else she could do. And she was still looking around in amazement when the phone rang. It was Zelda.

“What's up?”

“Not much.” Adrian looked around her ruefully. “In fact, absolutely nothing.”

“What does that mean?” But she wasn't worried this time. Adrian sounded better than she had in a long time. She almost sounded happy for once. But she wasn't. She was just beyond being depressed anymore. It had all gone too far, and maybe all she could do was laugh now.

“Attila the Hun has been here. Plundering and looting.”

“You've been robbed?” Zelda sounded horrified.

“You could call it that, I guess.” Adrian laughed and sat down on the floor next to the phone. Life had become very simple. “Steven picked up the rest of his things today. He left me the rug and the bed, and he took everything else, including my toothbrush.”

“Oh, my God. How could you let him do that?”

“What do you think I should have done? Gone after him with a shotgun? What am I supposed to do, fight for every dishtowel and hairpin? To hell with it. If he wants it all, he can have it.” And if he ever came back, which she suspected he might one day, he would bring it all back anyway, not that it really mattered. She was beyond fighting over coffee tables and couches.

“Do you need anything?” Zelda asked sincerely, and Adrian could only laugh.

“Sure. Do you happen to have a vanload of tables and chairs, a couple of dozen dishes, some tablecloths, a chest of drawers, some towels …oh, and don't forget a toothbrush.”

“I'm serious.”

“So am I. It doesn't matter, Zelda. He wants to sell this place anyway.” Zelda couldn't believe it, neither could Adrian. He had taken everything. But she had kept the only thing that mattered to her. Their baby. She was in surprisingly good spirits in spite of everything and it was only the next day that it hit her. She lay by the pool for a long time, thinking of him, and wondering how their life had managed to fall apart so quickly. Something must have been wrong from the start, something essential must have always been missing, in him perhaps, if not in their marriage. She thought of the parents and siblings he had walked out on years before, the friend he had betrayed, with never a look back. Maybe there was a part of him that just didn't know how to love. Otherwise it wouldn't have been possible for everything to fall apart the way it had. It just couldn't have …but it had. In a matter of weeks, their marriage had ended. It depressed her to think about it now, but she had to face the fact that he was gone. She had to make a new life for herself, but she couldn't even begin to imagine how. She was thirty-one years old, she had been married for two and a half years, and she was pregnant. She was hardly dating material, and she didn't want to go out with anyone anyway. She didn't even want to admit to anyone that Steven had left her. She kept telling everyone that Steven was away. Because it hurt too much and it was too embarrassing to say that he had left her. And when Bill Thigpen turned up at the pool that afternoon with a quizzical look and asked if they were moving out, she flinched visibly and said they were selling their furniture and buying everything new, but even to her something about the way she said it didn't sound convincing.

“It looked like great stuff,” he said cautiously as he watched her as they lay by the pool. And there had been something about Steven's face that had reminded him of Leslie when she left him. But Adrian looked perfectly happy as she lay by the pool. She had a book in her hands, and she was holding it upside down as she felt her heart ache, thinking of Steven.

T
HE WEEK THAT STEVEN MOVED OUT
, A
DRIAN FELT
as though she were in a dream. She got up, she went to work, she went home at night, and every night when she got there, she expected to find him. He would have come to his senses by then. He'd be mortified, apologetic, aghast at what he'd done, and they'd both laugh and go upstairs to bed and make up, and ten years hence he would tell their child how absurd he had been when she told him she was having a baby.

But when she got home at night, he wasn't there. He never called. And she sat on the floor of her living room at night, trying to read, or pretending to shuffle papers.

She had thought about buying new furniture as soon as he left. But she decided not to, in case he came back, which she still thought he would. And what was the point of having two sets of furniture for one apartment?

She kept the answering machine on most of the time, but she listened to the calls when they came in.They were never Steven, but usually friends, or her office, and lately more often than not it was Zelda. But Adrian didn't feel like talking to her either. Her only concession to keeping her life afloat was going to work and coming home. She felt like a robot getting up and going to work every day, and then coming home, making herself something to eat, and going back for the eleven o'clock news. She felt as though she were on an endless treadmill. There was a blind look of pain in her eyes day after day, and it hurt Zelda to see her like that, but even she couldn't help her. She still couldn't believe what Steven had done, or that he really meant it. But when Adrian tried to call him, his secretary always said he was away, and Adrian wasn't sure if he was or not. There was still that panicky feeling of what would happen to her if she really needed him, but she didn't for the moment, and she knew she just had to sit tight until he came to his senses.

It was Friday of the Fourth of July weekend when she ran into Bill Thigpen at the Safeway again. She had just finished the late news, and she had realized that she had nothing in the house for the next day, and she was off for the whole weekend. He was juggling two carts, and they were filled with charcoal, two dozen steaks, several packages of hot dogs and some ground meat, buns, rolls, and an assortment of things that looked as though he was preparing a picnic.