The Seven Year Bitch (25 page)

It was like a children's book I had read to Duncan where a tiny mouse couple—a dentist and his wife—have to work on the cavity of a fox.

“Then perhaps we can eat something cold,” Rolph said. He and Gerde discussed something in German, ignoring the fact that we were there. “Don't you have anything we can eat?”

Gerde made a pasta sauce with the vegetables that were meant for the goulash and half a bottle of ketchup and I made a salad, and we ate and drank in our screened-in gazebo. I began to relax. It was everything Russell and I had imagined.

“So are you two going to have another baby?” Rolph asked.

“One's just fine for me,” Russell said.

“We are already trying,” Rolph said.

I wondered what it said about our marriages that they were and we weren't.

“I'll get another bottle of wine,” I said, as if that was going to help them try right now. I went into the kitchen. They were moving on in life, expanding, proliferating if that was a word, and we the Trents were withering up. I was happy for them. I didn't know why I felt so shaken up. It had just taken me so much by surprise. I wasn't expecting it. But I couldn't expect my friend to consult with me before trying to get pregnant, like we were making a plan for tea.

“I don't know if a sibling is such a great thing in the after all,” Rolph said. “My brother and I shared a room and I always hated him.”

“I love my brother,” I said. I even loved his wife. They lived in Seattle, so I almost never got to see them.

“I could do without my sister,” Russell said.

“How did you come up with the name Duncan?” Rolph asked. “Are you great fans of the doughnut?”

“I wanted Duncan to be named Otto,” Russell said, ignoring the insult. “Otto Trent.”

I didn't say anything, but I had said no to Otto, because to me it sounded like the name of a Nazi guard. “No way I was going for Otto,” I said. “Unless I was giving birth to a Nazi guard.”

“
Ja
,” Rolph said. “Exactly. My grandfather was named Otto.”

“Did he ever kill any Jews?” I asked.

“Jesus, Izzy,” Russell said.

“
Ja
, of course. He killed lots of Jews, thousands, of course. He was a Nazi
Geschwader
in the
Luftwaffe
,” Rolph said.

Russell and I looked at each other. I was thinking about my relatives in their graves in the Jewish cemetery and, I was almost certain, Russell was too.

Later that night, with Rolph and Gerde and Minerva snuggled up in our bed, Russell and I lay in an L shape on the couches in the living room. In a romantic moment, Russell had suggested we lie head to head instead of feet to feet.

“Why aren't we in our own bed?” he whispered.

“I'm not sure,” I said. “It all happened quickly.”

“Did you notice they didn't bring anything, not even a bottle of wine?” Russell said.

“I know!” I whispered.

“Can you imagine spending the weekend at someone's house and not bringing a bottle of wine? And people think Jews are cheap.”

This was one thing I really loved about Russell, the negative spin he put on things. It gave me such a cozy, familial feeling, like I was a child talking to my mother after one of her dinner parties.

“Gerde did make the pasta sauce,” I said.

“God, it was just
awful
. And I'll tell you why they didn't want to go out to dinner. They were afraid they might have to offer to pick up the check.”

“I don't know,” I said, thinking how I felt closer to him than I had in a long time.

“Well I know. It's great you're trying to make friends with the other mothers and all that, but did you have to bring home a couple of Nazis? I mean this is just god-awful. I'll sell the house if I have to. No
danke
. Never again!”

I smiled.

“And I'll tell you another thing,” he said. “The name Otto is out. If we ever have another son, I can assure you, he won't be named Otto.”

In the morning Minerva bit Duncan again and again Gerde comforted her. Then Rolph bounced Duncan on his long leg and again said the German nursery rhyme.

“How does it go in English?” I asked, completely sick of them speaking German in front of us like we weren't even there.

“Let's see if I can say it in English,” Rolph said.

“I guess it's not too cheerful,” Rolph said as Duncan managed to climb down from his leg and run to me.

D
id you get your period?” I asked Shasthi when she walked in the door in the morning. The two weeks' waiting time was up from her third round of artificial insemination. If this didn't work we were going to have to decide whether or not to move on to in vitro fertilization, which would involve more daily hormone injections and general anesthesia and many more thousands of dollars. In which case, Dr. Heiffowitz had said, it would really make sense to consider having the myomectomy—the operation to remove her fibroids—first.

“No,” she said.

“So you could be pregnant!” I said.

“No,” she said. “I went for the test this morning.”

“So, next time,” I said. “It will work next time. Whatever we decide to do next.” I felt crushed. Like a Las Vegas gambler losing eight thousand dollars. A year's tuition in preschool. How could Dr. Heiffowitz have failed me like this, I couldn't help but think.

“I worry I could be in menopause,” she said and burst into tears. “I told my husband I wish we had gone to the doctor sooner. I didn't know this was happening to me.”

“Wait,” I said. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Dr. Heiffowitz would have to do something. “Do you get hot flashes?”

“Yes,” she cried. “Sometimes I get them.”

“But you're only forty-one,” I said, almost begging. My eyes had filled up with tears. I didn't know what to do. “It's still possible to get pregnant,” I said tentatively. I tried to think of people I knew who had gotten pregnant after menopause but I couldn't think of anyone. It wasn't possible. It wasn't possible!

“You don't know if this is true,” I said. “We'll ask the doctor. I'm so sorry. This is terrible.” I felt flattened. Menopause. I was sick. Here he was, Shasthi's Grim Reaper, coming for her in my house. I wished I had left her alone and not gotten involved. Russell had been completely right. I had made it worse for her. This was my fault in some very real way. Having no blood was the bloodiest ending of all.

All day I had the strange, clutching feeling of being abandoned. When I got home I felt relieved to see that Duncan was fine, lining up tiny animals in a long parade. Shasthi was still there. Life had somehow continued.

“What are you going to do on your vacation?” I asked. We were going upstate for a week.

“My husband and mother-in-law and brother and I are going to Niagara Falls,” she said.

I didn't know what I was expecting but I was surprised. Niagara Falls was where honeymooners went. It seemed like such a hopeful place. Such a long drive and for what? Just to have a lookylou. It seemed so pointless. “Oh that's nice,” I said. “It's beautiful there.”

“Have you ever been?”

“No,” I said.

Shasthi took her envelope of cash from the table, zipped her pocketbook, and went to the door. “Okay, bye then.”

I thought of her and her family, probably in her brother's cab, singing songs and laughing, talking about cricket, sleeping in a cheap motel, eating delicious food they'd brought from home.

I went to the door and opened it.

“Have a good time. Don't worry . . .” I started to say, but she was gone.

I stood there fighting the urge to run to the door and beg her to take me to Niagara Falls with her. I felt panicked, like I was straining against something, grunting with effort, like Duncan trying to break through the straps of his car seat. “Take me with you,” I whispered.

There were sequins everywhere because I still hadn't gotten the vacuum fixed. I bent down and picked them up off the rug while Duncan watched me.

I
can't,” I said to Gabe Weinrib when he called and asked if we could meet the following week.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I'm going to Miami.” Russell was going there on business and I'd told him there was no way I was going with him because I hated Miami and always regretted traveling with him because he acted so crazy in airports, and I'd just end up alone on the beach all day with Duncan and stuck in the hotel room all night while Russell was out with his client—but I didn't think I should get together with Gabe again.

“Well, I can meet with you there, m'dear,” he said. “I'm going to be visiting my uncle in Boca.”

“I'll be there with my son,” I said. “I won't have any time—”

“I'd love to meet your son. Dustin?”

“Duncan.”

“Duncan. It'll be a nice change from the geriatric set of Boca. Call me when you get there.”

I felt my face get hot. I couldn't speak. I couldn't imagine it—me in a bathing suit? Me in a sundress? Jeans? How could I explain spending time with this man? Would he come back to my hotel room with me?

When I got off the phone I lay on my bed and imagined his weight on top of me.

The next day I had my own appointment with Dr. Heiffowitz. I'd had dozens of conversations with Russell that had gone nowhere about whether we should have another baby. Or not. And we always decided against it. We didn't have the room or the money. We were on the verge of divorce. All the more reason, I thought, if we were going to get a divorce, to have another baby. So Duncan would have someone to be shuttled around with. He wouldn't bear the whole burden. When we fought and I did my karate kicking, Duncan would have someone to cry and cower with, huddled together under blankets, big brother holding the flashlight.

When my parents got divorced I would have died without my brother, and I was twenty-five and he was twenty-one. We didn't huddle under blankets, but we did go out for sushi and toast the end of an era and that had been an enormous comfort.

Duncan needed a sibling.

Either way there was the matter of the medication I was supposed to be taking for my thyroid that I had stopped taking while I was nursing and I had to go to Dr. Heiffowitz to find out if I should start taking it again.

Seeing him made my heart pound. His white-blond hair and icy blue eyes looking sensitively at me over his rimless glasses made me close my eyes for a moment.

I loved Dr. Heiffowitz. There was no other way to describe it. He had given me my son. He was more powerful to me than God or the Grim Reaper. He had listened to me and figured out what was wrong. He had shown me my follicle when a lesser doctor wouldn't have bothered. He was a genius and he loved me too.

If I took off all my clothes, I thought, it would not surprise him. It would almost be the only thing to do, to climb on his lap and wrap my arms around his neck.

“So,” he said, in that beautiful Israeli accent. “You had twins in September.”

I laughed but he didn't laugh.

“No,” I said.

He looked down at my chart.

“Yes, you had twins in September.”

“No,” I said.

“Are you being some kind of a joker?” he asked.

“No, I wouldn't joke about a horrible thing like twins. I had one son two years ago in November.”

“That's not possible,” he said.

“I'm sorry.”

He looked at the chart. “Your name is Isabelle Brilliant?”

“Isolde Brilliant,” I said.

“Your husband is David?”

“Russell.”

He got up and stormed out of the room yelling for Scottie.

Five minutes later he came back with my chart.

“You had one son, two years ago in November.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Without the medication, half a pill in the morning and half at night, you cannot get pregnant. It would not be possible. With the medication you can get pregnant, but you would have to give it a few weeks. Your levels are all wrong now. To put it in medical terms, you're all out of whack. So I want you to start taking the medication, regardless of whether you're planning to get pregnant. We have to get you back to normal.”

“So you're sure I can't get pregnant right now?”

“I'm sure.”

“By the way,” I said, “do you know what happened to Dr. Lichter?”

“Not really. I don't know for sure. I heard his mother died and he had a nervous breakdown,” Dr. Heiffowitz said.

“His mother?” I'd heard it was a family member, but I had assumed it was his child or wife, not mother.

Reluctantly, I got up to go.

“Do you think I should have another child?” I asked. I looked at him meaningfully in case he would want it to be with him. “My husband and I are probably going to get a divorce and then we might have to live in two small apartments.”

“My brothers and I shared a room,” Dr. Heiffowitz said.

“How many children do you have?” I asked.