“Oh, Jesus, what if she already had the baby! I better phone the hospital. Right?”
“Suit yourself.”
That won’t change anything, Bob thinks. What’s done is done. If she’s had the baby, his calling won’t help her; and if she hasn’t had the baby yet, she’s probably stuck away in a room without a phone. “No, I’ll go right over now. If she calls, Ronnie, or if your wife calls, say I’m on my way, okay?”
“Sure enough. Hey, I might tap me a couple more Colts, if it’s all right with you.”
“Sure, sure, help yourself. Take all you want. And thanks for watching the kids. I’ll call you from the hospital, soon’s I know what’s happening.”
“Suit yourself,” he says, working himself free of the couch, his eyes already moving toward the refrigerator. “I’ll just sleep here on the couch till you get back. I don’t have to work till tomorrow noon. Friday’s night’s busy, after the movies let out and all, so I stay late an’ don’t go in till noon.”
Bob doesn’t hear him. He’s already out the door and running for his car. As he runs, he punches his fist against his thigh, curses himself through clenched teeth. If he could beat himself up, he would. If he could slap himself around, punch himself in the stomach, throw himself to the ground and stomp on his back, kick himself in the kidneys, break his ribs, he would. But he can’t. Elaine needs him, so he can’t punish himself yet. But he will, goddammit, he will.
Bob pushes open the door from the hallway and enters the nearly dark room, walks carefully past the other beds, two of them with women sleeping in them, one empty, to the bed at the end, and as Dr. Beacham promised, Elaine is there, all in white, like an angel, or at least a saint, covered with a sheet and wearing a cotton nightie, her face washed and smooth, her damp hair pulled back by a pair of Ruthie’s white plastic barrettes. She’s lying slightly propped on pillows, peacefully asleep.
Stopping beside the bed, Bob stares down at his wife, looks down the length of her body to where the baby was and on to her feet. Her left: hand dangles from the bed, as if pointing to the floor, and her thin wrist, circled with a plastic cord and name tag, is like a child’s, and to Bob, at this moment, tells everything. Her slender white wrist carries to him the long, sadly relentless tale of her strength, her patience and her trust. It tells him what he’s been shutting out for months, perhaps for years. Purely and simply, it tells him about the woman’s goodness.
His jumbled thoughts and feelings suddenly clarify and separate, and he realizes in a rush that
Shame washes over him, and he feels suddenly cold. He knows, for this brief moment, what he’s done, and the knowledge makes him feel naked. To keep his options open, a man has kept himself from loving his own wife. This is a terrible sin. It’s the kind of sin, worse than a crime, that Satan loves more than a crime, because it breeds on itself and generates more sin. Because of the nature of his sin, it’s been impossible for Bob to see goodness in Marguerite or Doris or anyone else he might like to love. Yet until now, to keep his options open, he’s been willing, he’s even been eager, to trade off the years it took him to lose sight of Elaine, all the years of living with her day in and out, eating, working, sleeping with her, night after night, season after season, until she finally became invisible and he no longer knew what she looked like, until her voice became as familiar and lost to his ears as his own is, until, when he wished to see her, truly see who this woman was, he could only look into the exact center of her eyes and see the exact center of his own eyes looking back and know that he still had not seen her — until finally, now, years and years later, after what he’s done to her tonight, and perhaps only because of what he’s done to her tonight, Bob is able, when Satan isn’t looking, to glance at the woman’s thin wrist and at last see the woman’s goodness, which is the very thing, the only thing, a man can truly, endlessly, passionately love.
Her eyes flutter open, and she smiles. “Hi, honey.”
Bob can’t speak. He pats her shoulder, then leans over and gently kisses her on the lips.
She brushes his cheeks with her fingertips and whispers, “The baby’s a boy, Bob. It’s a boy.”
He nods. He knows, he knows.
“Have you seen him? He’s real pretty.”
He shakes his head no, turns away from her face and lays his head on her breast.
Tenderly, she runs her fingers through his hair.
“I … I’m sorry,” he says in a muffled voice. “I … I’m sorry I wasn’t able to … to help.”
