Love Stories in This Town

Greg and I locked eyes happily.

We walked into the house, and it was perfect. High ceilings, a big open kitchen for me to cook in, or learn to cook in. A bonus craft room, where I could put the Singer sewing machine my father had given me when I graduated from college three years before. I found Greg in a second garden, off the bedroom. He stood with his hands on his hips, gazing up at the canopy of trees. When I approached, he turned and looked at me.

“We found it,” I said.

“I could love this,” he agreed quietly.

“Yes,” I said. My mind swam with visions of us: reading the paper on the front step, walking across the street with towels slung around our necks, tucking someone into bed in the kids’ room. I opened the freezer and saw ice-cream sandwiches. I thought, I love ice-cream sandwiches.

Maybe it was the caffeine—which I was drinking for the first time in months—but the next few houses were a blur. We chattered about mortgages and contracts. As Joe drove, I furnished the house in my mind: a sleek couch in front of the fireplace—maybe leather? I imagined myself in the craft room, sliding fabric under the needle, really making a go of Madeline Designs, now that I no longer had to waitress every night.

Joe’s cell phone rang. “Hello?” he said. “No, no,” he said. “Couldn’t have been me.” He snapped the phone shut and turned to look at us. “Somebody took the key to the first house. That was the owner. He’s pissed.” He shook his head and chuckled.

I looked at Greg, who said coldly, “Why don’t you check your pockets, Joe.”

Joe’s phone rang again. “What?” he said. He started to flush. “Well, okeydokey,” he said. “I-I-I…” He stopped talking and nodded, then closed the phone. “I guess we’re the only ones who’ve been there. But I just don’t—”

“Watch out for the divider,” said Greg in a steely voice.

As we doubled back to all the houses we’d seen, I tried to calm my husband. “It’s going to be perfect,” I said, as he muttered, “total waste of our time.” After Joe found the key to our dream house, locked in another house, he called the owners. “Hi there, Joe Jones, Lone Star Realty,” he said. “The funniest thing—”

“Don’t turn on University,” said Greg from the backseat. Joe turned on University. We sat in traffic caused by a construction site—a site we had driven by earlier—in complete silence.

By lunchtime, we had returned the key. The house looked better than ever. A lemonade stand had been set up by the park. A little boy rode by on his bicycle, a wrapped birthday present in the basket.

Joe took us out to lunch. I popped my pills right at the table and changed my Maxi Pad in the bathroom. I was not healthy. I ate a cheeseburger with avocado, cheddar, and bacon. I called my father in Haralson and said, “We found it,” and my father said, “That’s wonderful, Kimmy.”

Across the restaurant, Greg spoke excitedly into his cell phone. “Mom,” he said, “Listen to this, Mom…”

Over lunch, we filled out the paperwork, making an offer for full price and then some. Joe assured us we would get the house. Between bites of his burrito, Joe told us he had just hit his stride at Enron when the shit storm hit. “Thought I’d give this real estate thing a try,” he said. He talked about his six-month-old baby, whom he called “Girly.” His wife, also an Enron-employee-turned-realtor, he called “Doll.”

After lunch, we drank Diet Dr Pepper and looked at many houses that sucked, feeling superior.

That night, I wore a strapless dress. It was deep green, and had a matching jacket with three-quarter-length sleeves. We wandered around the Woodlands, trying to find a restaurant where we could splurge, though we were nervous about spending every cent PharmaLab had promised and hundreds of thousands they hadn’t. If we got the house, we could no longer say, “Oh, screw Big Pharma. Let’s just move to Wyoming and live off the land.”

Though we were outside, I felt as if we were trapped in a mall, with one neon-lit shop after another. All we could find was a Cheesecake Factory, and I’ve never liked cheesecake, so we returned to the Great American Grill.

“Cheers,” I said, holding my margarita high.

Greg brought his glass to mine, and said, “Cheers, my love.” We toasted ourselves, and the little family we would begin, as soon as I was no longer bleeding heavily. A week before, I had packed some Victoria’s Secret Supermodel Sexy Whipped Body Cream into my suitcase. It would keep.

The gold minivan pulled up as usual in the morning, but Joe was no longer at the wheel. Instead, Doll—whose real name was Sally—hopped out. She was short and plump, her red hair in barrettes. “Joe wanted a day with the baby, and I needed some adult time,” Sally explained. Her skirt was tight and orange, and she wore plastic jelly sandals. As we sipped coffee and ate bagels, Sally’s phone rang. It appeared her phone was broken, and she could use only the speaker attachment.

With Girly crying in the background, Joe told Sally that there was another offer on our dream house. We needed to name our best price right now, he said, and the owners would decide in the next five minutes.

I felt flustered. The next five minutes? Neither Joe nor Sally knew whether we should raise our price or not. “They could have a lowball offer,” said Sally. She added, “Or they could have a higher offer.” She took a bite of her bagel. “Yum,” she said.

Greg had done some calculations on his laptop (he loved Excel spreadsheets) and concluded the house was worth less than the asking price. We decided to hold firm, and headed out with a list of addresses, waiting nervously for Sally’s phone to ring. “Might as well keep looking, just in case,” said Sally. The flight back to our rental apartment and my dogeared copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting was at 4 P.M.

On Scullers Cove Court, we entered an airless house where someone collected Hummel figurines. “This would be a great house for an older couple with no kids,” mused Sally. She stood in the hallway, telling us about Girly, and how she didn’t like tummy time, but how Sally had to make her do her tummy time. It was so stressful, said Sally.

Back in the minivan, we parked outside another (gigantic) house. “Whoops!” said Sally. “Y’all? It looks like I locked my purse inside that other house? And my phone’s in it, and my Palm. And it’s locked, oh, whoops! And we can’t look at any other houses, cause my realtor key is also—”

“In your purse,” Greg finished.

Sally thought fast. “How about I drop y’all off for a nice lunch?” she suggested. “And I’ll go get all this worked out? And y’all can have a real nice lunch?”

“It’s ten-thirty,” I said. “I don’t want lunch. Our flight leaves in a few hours!” I was a wreck, admittedly.

“Oh, whoops,” commented Sally.

At the hotel concierge desk, Sally made some calls. Greg stared at his nice new shoes. The night before, we had made each other crack up by saying, “Diet Dr Pepper!” and “Girly!” Now, nothing seemed so hilarious.

Sally finished her whispered calls and approached, looking a little less spry. Again, she made the case for an early lunch.

“What about the house?” said Greg loudly.

“Oh, right,” said Sally. “I did talk to Joe. We lost the house. But how about I run get my keys, and…a nice, you know, lunch?”

I listened vaguely as Greg discussed the situation further, learning that we had been outbid, and it was over, though we could make a backup offer. When the calls were made and what phones worked and where various keys ended up, we were too exhausted to clarify. I would never stand in that beautiful kitchen, eating an ice-cream sandwich in my bathing suit.

I went upstairs and changed my Maxi Pad and swallowed my pills. I took off my oversize sunglasses and lay down. Reflexively, I put my hands on my stomach, but then remembered, and let them fall open.

We spent a long afternoon looking at other homes. We tried to convince ourselves that a too-small house with a crazy water feature was even better, all things considered, but as Sally dropped us off at the airport, a sinking feeling was already settling in.

“Don’t forget,” said Sally, as I climbed from the van, “the perfect home is out there.”

“Okay,” I said. Four days before, a technician had moved her wand on my skin and looked at an image on the screen. The doctor was sure everything was fine. The ultrasound was just a precaution. Greg told me he could see the baby’s face—its eyes—but when the doctor explained that the baby had never grown more than a few weeks old, that it had no head, and no heart, Greg said he must have been wrong.

In two weeks, my baby, the mass of cells, would be analyzed and we would be told it was tetraploidy. The doctor wrote something on her rectangular pad, then handed it to me. The paper read, “Tetraploidy. 92, XX, YY.”

“Any questions?” asked the doctor.

I knew that to Greg, these symbols would mean something, bloom into a narrative. To me, they were cruel and unfathomable. “But why?” I said. “What did I do?”

She sighed, and said, “Nothing, Kimberly. It had absolutely nothing to do with you. It’s just…the way things work out sometimes.” She scribbled again, handing me a prescription for Prozac. When I got back to our apartment, I put both sheets of paper in my underwear drawer.

Outside the Houston airport, Greg waited, holding our bags. He stood, broad shoulders a little slumped, and watched me. I remembered the sweet shock I’d felt when I’d first seen him, in the audience of my graduation fashion show. Most of my classmates, like Greg’s sister, presented glamorous gowns, but I designed coats for little girls, swinging cape-style coats made of wool and fastened with vintage toggles. I knitted matching scarves and mittens. I’d worn only plastic parkas growing up—my designs came from my imagination, and a picture I’d seen once of a Parisian schoolgirl, standing in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Though the SCAD store had wanted to buy my whole collection, I saved one red coat, one scarf, one set of mittens.

“Have a safe trip home,” said Sally.

“Okay,” I said. I walked to my husband, and he folded me inside his arms. I wanted to say something, to fix something. He looked so young, and so bewildered.

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “It happened so fast.”

“There will be another,” he said.

We looked at each other. There would be another, there would. But I wanted the one that was gone.

On Messalonskee Lake

ONE

A woman had drowned in the lake, but that did not make it any less picturesque. We hadn’t known her, after all; I had never met her, and my husband, Bill, was a boy when she died. She was Bill’s aunt Renée, married to his father’s brother, Gerry. She played the violin. This was all I could get out of my husband during our drive up I-95.

“So she fell out of the boat?” I said, waddling into the cabin, which smelled of either pine, Pine-Sol, or both.

“Yeah,” said Bill.

“When was this?”

“A while ago,” said Bill. “I told you, I was just a kid.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“We need some air,” said Bill. He was wandering around, opening doors and windows.

“Who falls out of a boat?” I said. “It’s very sad.”

My husband approached. He tried to take me in his arms, but I barely fit. “Here,” I said, pressing his palm to my stomach. His fingers were warm, and I leaned into him.

“What?” he said, into my hair. He moved his thumb along my neck softly; I kissed him.

“I think it’s hiccuping,” I said. There was a bubbling sensation inside me, not the kicks I had come to know, but something lighter.

“Maybe it’s laughing,” said my husband.

When we realized we would never be alone again, Bill and I had decided on a romantic week at his family’s Maine cabin. He had spent his childhood at Camp Snow Island, and I knew he wanted to move back and run it someday. Unless I was hit by a bus or got trigger toe, I wasn’t leaving the Boston Ballet, but I was happy to spend a week in the wilderness.

I asked for an economy car when I called Thrifty Rental, but when we took our key into the parking lot, there was a PT Cruiser in Slot A-8. “No,” said Bill, when he saw it.

“I think it’s cute,” I said.

“You cannot drive a PT Cruiser to Belgrade Lakes,” said my husband. “You can’t step out of that car and buy bait.”

“I’ll buy the bait,” I said.

“Lord help us all,” said my husband.

· · ·

I began putting away the groceries we’d bought on the way: jam, bread, milk, eggs. “Was Renée pretty?” I asked, opening the refrigerator.

“Sure,” said Bill. “I don’t know.” He motioned to one of the family photos placed around the cabin in tarnished frames. “There she is,” he said.

I peered at the photograph. Aunt Renée wore a bemused expression and a bandanna. She had her hand on the shoulder of a little boy. “Who’s that?” I said. “I thought you said they didn’t have kids.”

“That’s me,” said Bill.

“Oh,” I said. The boy in the picture—Bill—was smiling timidly. I wondered if our baby would be shy.

At Day’s General Store, we bought steaks and beer. I had gained eighteen pounds, but the doctor told me to eat even more. He wasn’t really worried, he said, but he was cautiously concerned. Jocelyn, who was in my company, hadn’t gained enough pregnancy weight, and her baby was born six weeks early. Little Allan was fine, but the story was scary enough to make me choke down a bunch of beef.

As Bill manned the grill, I sat on the deck overlooking Messalonskee Lake. Snow Island, where the camp was located, was faintly visible across the water. A green boat puttered by: a man and his young daughter. “Any luck?” called my husband, and the girl held up a fish.

“Goddamn,” said Bill. He was in his element here, a fact I tried to forget every morning as he set his jaw and stepped on the T, uncomfortable in a suit and tie. Bill didn’t like cities in general and Boston in specific. He loathed his job raising money for the Appalachian Trail Society. I had studied dance in Burlington, Vermont, for the first few years of our marriage. We had planned on a lifetime of dreaming big and working hard. When I actually made it, we were both ecstatic, but also stunned.

“I can’t wait to take the boat out,” said Bill.

“Is it the same boat?” I asked. “The one Renée fell out of?”

“What?” said Bill. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

I hefted myself out of the chair—my balance was completely off now—and walked across the pine needles to take a peek. It was yellow, with a bucket in the stern.

Bill finished grilling, and we ate at a wooden picnic table. We made up two beds on the screen porch and lay in one. Bill pressed his ear to my belly, trying—but failing—to hear a heartbeat. I pulled my maternity tank top up, feeling his scratchy cheek against my skin.

For days, we napped and cooked and swam in the lake. I worked out regularly—I was expected back in the studio six weeks after the baby was born, so there was no time for a break. In my off-time, I constructed elaborate stories about dead Renée: a doomed affair, a clandestine meeting gone disastrously wrong. I pressed Bill for details, but he claimed to know nothing. Had he been there the night she drowned? He was asleep, he said. Was she depressed? How would he know, he said. He told me not to get worked up. Each evening, the man and his daughter floated past us, holding up lines of fish. Bill had some luck, and I even went with him a few times, though I joked I would sink the boat. I loved watching my husband paddle—the movement of his strong muscles.

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