Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (25 page)

“Look, I do great things, and I have a nice life. I don’t blame him for wanting to spend time with me.” Was she kidding? Did she not understand the word
used
? “Stephanie, why would you even want a guy like that? He clearly doesn’t want to be married to you. He continues to speak to me, and he told me his parents can’t stand you. Is that the life you really want?” Why would
she
want a guy like that? If she knew all these intimate details of our life, details he clearly shared with her, then why would
she
want to be involved with
him
? Even if she only saw him as a boy toy, she still wanted to be mixed up with someone who clearly lied to his wife and caused so much pain. I didn’t understand.

I hung up the phone with Bernie.

When Gabe opened the bathroom door, I threw the phone at him. He caught it and his towel dropped to the ground.

“Your girlfriend just told me we’ve been separated for months and that I’m in denial!” I was tapping my foot, certain I’d trapped him.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he yelled as he plucked his towel off the floor.

“Is this denial?” I used my finger to measure the space between us, then pointed it toward the set kitchen table. “How could you? All you do is lie.” There’s never just one cockroach.

“I guess I said it because I didn’t want to burn a bridge. I’m embarrassed by the way I handled things with her, and one lie turns into another. I didn’t want her to know…”

“…what a fucking asshole liar you are?” I finished his sentence. “I just love how you’re so concerned with sparing her feelings while your pregnant wife, the life you’ve had for the past five and half years with me, means nothing to you. You’ll break your promise to me of never speaking with her again, just to spare her feelings?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’ll fix this. You’ll see.” No, I wouldn’t. This was it. It was the last time I saw him until our divorce proceedings.

The next afternoon, I looked in the mirror and began to tear up. I really looked. It was a silent moment. I hadn’t showered in days. A quiet yet strong voice erupted in the mirror. “Stephanie, you deserve more than this, and you will find it. You
deserve
. And you can do better. How could you do any worse? Dad’s right.” I knew it would be the hardest thing I’d ever done, but staying with Gabe would have been harder. I’d always wonder and suspect. I couldn’t live like that, always wanting to check itemized lists of his phone calls and American Express bills. I’d never trust him again because every new day might reveal fresh lies. He’d looked me in the eye and told me he’d never let anything bad happen to me. “You are going to find happiness. You will,” I said squinting at myself. “But it won’t be with him. Ever.” That’s the moment I vowed to stop loving him.

“I’ll never forget when you told me that,” Alexandra sometimes tells me now. “I asked you how you could be dating again, and you told me that when someone is that unspeakable to you, your brain won’t let you love them anymore. As much as you thought you’d never stop, when someone disgraces you, something in you would die if you stayed. That’s when I knew how strong you were.”

I don’t think of myself as strong, despite what I’ve been through, yet people constantly make a point of saying it. I was doing what I had to, to get by, to exist. Screw it. It’s not about strength. That’s the wrong word. It’s courage. It took courage to listen to my gut and leave the comfort I’d known. And courage can’t happen without fear. I was terrified. It’s why strength never seems to be the right word.

I saw a freckled sixth-grade Stephanie in that mirror, and I asked her to tell me what to do. “Run, don’t walk. Pass Go. This is your get-out-of-jail moment. A life with a man like that would be a prison sentence. Fucking run!” And that’s exactly what I did, and we all know how I feel about running.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS MY LIFE.” I FELT MY FACE TURN
to ugly, my eyebrows pinching, my mouth so filled with pain, I couldn’t feign a smile. My father rubbed my back in circles, his eyes red and teary. “Dad, I hate this.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know,” he said shaking his head in disbelief.

“How is this my life?”

“I know, sweetheart.” And he held my hand. And we cried together in a brown windowless waiting room.

When I told my gynecologist I needed an abortion, he said, “We don’t handle extractions, but there’s a clinic…” Aren’t extractions when the Russian lady at the salon pushes the pores of your nose during a facial? Maybe he said, “We don’t handle terminations.” Either way, I was terrified of the word
clinic
. Clinic. It was scribbled on a yellow Post-it note with a date…December 12, 2002, the last possible day I had to abort. “But obviously,” he said sternly, “the sooner the better.” AB+ was scribbled beside the date. “You’ll have to tell them your blood type.” I hated this.

Clinics were for girls who still played music on their outgoing answering machines, not for twenty-seven-year-old wives. But there I was with a planned pregnancy in my lap, waiting for a woman with a clipboard to call my name.

When I heard, “Stephanie Rosen,” I pulled my knees to my chest. My father waved to the nurse and whispered to me, “It’s going to be okay.”

I stared at him for a moment, then said in the frailest voice I’ve known, “I’m scared.” He shook his head to say Yes, I know sweetheart. He became the father, once again, of a little girl, the one who came to him crying after a tumble on the playground. The one with gummy white scars on her knees. I hated how I still needed him.

I wrinkled my nose and shook my head, then pushed myself into a stand. “It’ll be fine.” I didn’t know if I said it more for him or for me.

The nurse led me into a room to take some blood, and I was frightened they’d impose counseling. Lecture me, using words like
risks
or
options
, as if I were a reckless teenager who’d shoved the results of her test into the back of her knapsack. After the blood tap, I landed in a small dressing room. “Put all your items in the bag.” I was handed a pink paper robe and black garbage bag.

A garbage bag.

I trembled as I disrobed. It was as if the paper robe were made of black-and-white jail stripes. After parting with my possessions, I worried they’d want fingerprints or a mug shot. I was right—well, almost. I was led to a room for a sonogram.

I saw the heartbeat. A white blinking dot.
“I’m sorry, baby”
chanted in my head so many times I worried I might have said it aloud.
“I’m so sorry.”
The woman who’d had the clipboard moved the electronic table to a seated position. “Now don’t get up too fast. Are you okay? Any dizziness?”

No, I’m fine. Leave me the fuck alone. Leave.

“I’m fine.”

I finally stood. The groin towel fell, damp with my sweat. I gulped air as she led me out of the room, her hand on my lower back.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I wanted to be silent. There was no use for language. I didn’t care to explain to anyone how I felt about anything. I lost interest in speech, nodded my head, and went mute.

I joined a narrow hallway where other women in other pink paper gowns stood, biting fingernails. I walked it with my hand gliding along the wall for support. I wondered what my father was doing in the waiting room alone. Was he reading
Newsweek
or pamphlets on how to support a friend after an abortion? Did he look for one targeted toward men? Did he start to read it and set it down because it was too upsetting to think of his little girl, the one he used to set on his belly when she was upset? Being put under, strapped to a table, a life she wanted being removed.

“Are you still with the guy that did this to you?” a woman with blue eyeliner asked me after a few minutes. I didn’t know how she got dressed that morning and was able to apply makeup. I could hardly breathe.

“No, he’s a fucking asshole. His name is Gabriel Rosen, so don’t ever end up dating him.” I went from mute to mortifying in less than fifteen seconds. I was RPM in a robe.

“Yeah, this is my second time here,” she said while examining her cuticles, “with the same guy. Is this your first?”

“It’s my first everything,” I said, fingering the opening of my gown.

“Is he out there?” I knew she meant the waiting room, and as soon as I thought of it, I felt nauseous again. I imagined my father looked empathetic, his blue eyes welling at the sight of other young pregnant girls, a pamphlet curled in his hands as he waited and prayed. Maybe he wondered what he’d say to me when it was over. “Mine’s not out there either. I came here alone. So what happened to you?”

Normally I would’ve asked to see her tax return so she’d learn from inappropriate. Instead, I began to spill, “My twenty-eight-year-old husband came home every single fertile day for months trying to get me pregnant, and the whole time he was off running around with an older woman. And that’s only the one I found out about.” I imagined there were others, hiding in his hospital walls. Clicking their heels, shuffling, crawling for what he had to give. “I can just picture him cruising his hospital hallways and the nightclubs with his wedding ring in his pocket. The boy would whisper how much he adored me before kissing me goodnight and attending to his beeper. Little did I know that ‘beeper’ is forty-three years old and lives in a luxury Fifth Avenue duplex overlooking the park.” I said Bernie’s age in a low tone reserved for deviant behavior, as if I were saying Gabe had sex with a horse. Who would be with her when he could be with me? Just as I’d ponied up to thoughts of mommyhood, Gabe saddled the idea of another woman. Mrs. Robinson didn’t just rob the cradle—she stole away with my rattle, bouncer seat, and designer diaper bag.

I didn’t care that my vagina was now showing, as I heaved into my knees, grabbing handfuls of my gown. I began to cry.

“Don’t worry, sweetie. You’re still young. You’ve got plenty of time to meet many more assholes.” She didn’t seem surprised by my tears.

“This wasn’t an accident. We tried to have this baby. We tried for months, and the fucking piece of shit coward is probably playing golf right now.” I wanted everyone to hate him.

“You can change your mind. You don’t have to…”

“No. I didn’t want a baby,” I said through the snot, “I wanted a family.” I crossed my arms around my shoulders, and began to rock myself out of the sobs.

I was wearing paper, in a hall full of girls with socks, all of us having abortions. Gabe never offered to be there. He knew the day, knew exactly what was happening. Said he wasn’t ready for a child. He was a urologist. He did office hours, not clinics.

The night before the abortion was scheduled, I called Gabe. “Are you sure this is what you want?” I wanted less to regret, and if he didn’t argue, it was what he wanted too. What he decided he wanted was to be single again. He wasn’t ready to be a father, and he was tired of being a husband.

Gabe tried to get me pregnant and then realized he didn’t love me enough. Our apartment, our life, didn’t make him happy because there wasn’t a velvet rope outside our door. He said he just didn’t love me enough to stay married, that when he thought of “us,” he thought of “a long time ago.”

“We want different things,” he had said. “You’re happy throwing dinner parties for our friends, that whole wine and music thing, but I don’t want to be settled down now. I want to be on Page Six and go to the places that are hard to get into.” Suddenly I was the club he wanted no part of because I wanted him as a member. All of our relationship, he’d tried to convince me of just the opposite, saying he didn’t care about those velvet-rope places. Said he wouldn’t go anywhere with a line whose dress code wouldn’t allow for flip-flops. He’d spoken of people who wanted a boldfaced lifestyle with disgust and contempt. We always hate in others much of what we detest of ourselves. So really, at the end of the day, Gabe hated that he was one of those people, hated that it actually was important to him, where he went, and what people thought of him. He said he wanted to be a famous doctor, the kind that would land him a spot on television or, at the very least, in a Ralph Lauren advertisement. He said he wanted fame. He said it aloud. I can’t believe I married him on purpose.

Rome called the day before my appointment at the clinic. “How are you feeling?” was code for “Are you still going through with it?” She told me it was no big deal. “I had one in between having Gabe and Jolene,” she said. “I know how you feel.” No she didn’t. This wasn’t just the end of a pregnancy; it was the end of a marriage. “Who’s going with you?” she asked hesitantly.

“My father.” Gabe didn’t offer.

“It’s just horrible. I swear, Stephanie, we didn’t teach him this.” Then, with those almost-famous almost-last words, she added, “I’ll call you tomorrow to see how you are.” Also code for “to make sure I’m not a grandmother of this divorce.” And she did call. It was the last time we ever spoke. “Okay, sweetie, I know it’s sad, but you’ll be okay. I’ll call you tomorrow to see how you’re doing.” I never heard from her again.

I was terror-stricken when the nurse said I was next. I shuffled to the bathroom and began to vomit in the toilet. I didn’t know if it was morning sickness or mourning sickness. I thought I’d faint. They made me keep the bathroom door open. Then came straps.

I stared at the ceiling, my thighs strapped to a table, my feet hoisted in stirrups. A wooden butterfly hung between green fluorescent lights overhead. They pulled a string, and the wings began to flap. I wouldn’t look at faces. “I’m doctor so and so…I’m here to administer your…I’ll be beside you the whole time…” I stopped listening and interrupted with talk.

“Do you know I was on fertility drugs trying to have this baby, and my doctor husband came home every single day from the hospital trying to get me pregnant? He lied. He looked me in the eyes and lied.” For some irrational reason, I wanted these doctors to know I was married to a doctor, that I wasn’t some irresponsible girl from a poor home, the ones I imagined they were used to seeing. I wanted to prove myself, to save some dignity, and his being a doctor made me feel more important. “His name is Dr. Gabriel Rosen.” I whispered his name as if he were responsible for leukemia. Any chance I got, I’d tell people his name, as a warning. As if a plague were coming, I’d flash my headlights toward oncoming traffic. Listen to me. He’s horrible. The end is near! The people who surround a surgery table right before the drugs are administered must witness more confessions than a priest after New Year’s.

When they woke me, they used my married name. “Stephanie, Mrs. Rosen, do you hear me?”

“It’s Klein. It’s Klein.” I pushed aloud through the cramping. “Will I still be able to have children?”

“Stephanie Klein, yes. Yes.”

Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes.

Those Germans got it wrong. Klein doesn’t mean
small
, it means
strong
. From here on out, I’m keeping my name.