Referred Pain: Stories Read online

  “Pittsburgh? It’s not exactly a thrilling alternative. Why on earth go to Pittsburgh when you can be in Paris? It’s not right to try to stop them, Nick.”

  “If her father’s sick, she can get home more easily.” He cocked his head in the brash way she remembered from high-school. “Martha said it, not me.” He looked unpleasantly snide and, yes, boyish—a boy who’d easily disposed of a negligible threat.

  That boyish swagger, so distasteful in a man his age, had been appealing long ago. For the Willards were lapsed high-school sweethearts; their meeting years later was a fluke, they both agreed. “Kismet,” Nick Willard liked to joke. “I never even went to the symphony in those days.” He won the tickets in an office raffle, had nothing better to do and no one he cared to invite. During the intermission he paced the lobby, solitary, drink in hand, looking in need of rescue. Who should turn up but Julia, rushing past with a clipboard and a rolled-up extension cord. They fell into each other’s arms, then stayed up half the night in her Back Bay apartment, in her bed, where between bouts of avid sex, they told their stories—both more successful at work than at love. “At the office I’m the boss, and I run a tight ship,” he told her, grinning, holding her down with his elbows and knees. Julia remembered to this day how he demonstrated wrestling holds he’d learned on the high-school team, how she pleaded for mercy in mock alarm, his sly laughter as he promised to release her, but only if she would submit to his every command … Who would have dreamed it—solid, steady Nick Willard, reappearing out of the blue? After sixteen years? Seventeen? Blond and hulking, still blessed with a wrestler’s taut body, he was a haven after the fly-by-night men she’d spent more than a decade fretting over.

  What Nick remembered was studying her body, softer-edged and more willing now than at seventeen—how readily it went from eager to languid and back again. She’d kept the supple frame and moody energy that had roused him in adolescence; her hazel eyes had the same glint; she still seemed electrically charged, poised to leap at life. His first marriage had ended soon after his son, nine years old, was killed on his bike by a hit-and-run driver. He thought he would go mad with grief. Even now, two years later … He choked up when he told her about it, and Julia, listening, was near tears as well. Maybe it wasn’t too late to try again.

  It certainly wasn’t too late for passion. The first year or so they made love with the voracity of the bruised but undefeated, outwitting fate. Then they would lie twined in the dark, conjuring up the family they might have raised had they not been sidetracked. The children, a boy and a girl, ideally, would be at the awkward age, bewildered by sprouting breasts and a breaking voice, struggling with geometry, tempted by drugs, entranced by the latest hip-hop idols. They talked and talked—or rather, Nick talked while Julia lay by his side happily sated, feeding his fantasies with an indulgent word now and then.

  After the seemingly endless years of turbulent love affairs, Julia no longer expected to have children, and she had made her peace with that. She’d never really pined for babies anyhow. It was love she pined for. She loved everything about love—the desire, the ever-startling bliss, and the lush, dank lassitude after. Still, Nick was so keen on a family. Why not try to gratify him if she could? Especially when trying simply meant letting herself be loved, practically assailed by love, insistent and tenacious as his grief. And so they tried. And tried. If only desire and urgency could make a baby, she thought, and she pitied him even as she luxuriated in his assaults. Until, just when it seemed impossible, miraculously Kevin came to them. Willed into being, as it were, by the force of Nick’s longing.

  At first, Julia Willard was bemused, dubious. But at his urging she warmed to the idea. Right after Kevin arrived she made a blunder, though. “Come to think of it, I was sort of hankering for a girl,” she said, ever so lightly.

  Nick’s face hardened. “Well, it’s not as if we can send him back, can we?”

  They were in bed, entwined. A passionate pair, still. Sex was panoramic, engulfing. Julia leaned back to give him a wry look. “No?”

  He detached from her. “Julia! How can you say that?”

  “Why? Is it against the rules or something? Maybe you should spell out the rules of the game before we go too far.”

  This he ignored. “Anyway,” he said, “you knew. From when you had the amnio.”

  “The amnio? Oh, right, the amnio,” she grunted.

  “He’s a beautiful baby, Julia. Besides, we can always try again.”

  “Oh, I get it. Sure, we can try again.” Her voice was husky. She turned away and curled her body into a ball.

  It wasn’t long before he was pressing for another.

  “So soon, Nick?”

  “Why wait? You wanted a girl, didn’t you?”

  What was the old saying? she thought. In for a penny, in for a pound. So there, and far more easily this time, was Joanne—a dusky beauty of an infant with hair the same shade as her mother’s, yet so much finer. Julia’s heart melted whenever she thought of her, whenever they whispered about her in bed. She became nearly as absorbed as Nick was. How could she resist? Both children were turning out to be irresistible—beautiful, clever, everything parents could wish for. Their antics, their little triumphs at school, their enthusiasms staved off creeping middle age. And fortunately there was no need to consider leaving work to stay home. Even Nick wouldn’t go so far as to expect it. Julia loved her job, relished dreaming up events and making them happen. Her cunning diplomacy was a legend in the field. “You’d better talk to him, Julia,” the director would say about some famously willful musician. “No one else can get him to budge.” Plenty of mothers managed a high-powered job, she told Nick. She could too. She was used to juggling acts.

  Saturday afternoon, to avoid Nick, Julia Willard drove to meet a friend in town, where she found distraction but no real relief. The Willards had never been given to nattering on about their kids, boring others to tears. Their pleasure in Kevin and Joanne was too lusciously private. Like sex, Julia thought. Or like sex had been, before. For as their delight in the special children blossomed and unfurled, their love was scaled down, becalmed. Maybe that happened to most couples. But to them? Soon passion was little more than a prelude to the inevitable remembering. Remember when Joanne hid the stray cat in her room and in the middle of the night we heard kittens whining? Right, and Kevin couldn’t stop sneezing so we had to give them all away. The time he got appendicitis at camp and we raced to that hospital in Worcester? Remember you were teaching Joanne to drive, and while you dashed into the drugstore she took a spin around the block alone? Right, I was about to call the police when she rounded the corner. Just missed the newsstand.

  It was all inscribed in memory, forming an ongoing saga, like a chronicle they were compiling together. But it was time for the story to change. The children were on their own now, and Julia Willard wanted something more solid than memories. She wanted back what they had had those first two years, when Nick gazed at her as if he were about to forage for hidden treasure. She wanted the games they used to play in bed, games of threat and resistance and more threat and finally submission. It was all only words, harmless words, but bewitching. Their very own secret games. Was it so foolish to crave that again? They were hardly old, after all.

  When she came home she found Nick on his knees in the garden, in the fading light.

  “I called Kevin from the car,” she greeted him. “It’s not quite settled. Martha’s father’s doing better, and he didn’t want them giving up Paris for his sake.” Nick didn’t answer, just bent lower and dug more fiercely. “Not all parents are so selfish,” she said, striding off. She had to be back downtown soon to oversee a chamber music recital. It was a relief to get away, and a relief to find Nick asleep in the darkened house when she returned.

  Being out, doing what she did best, gave perspective. Nick was right; she hadn’t been quite honest, pretending he would enjoy Kevin’s news about Paris. She knew all too well how relieved he’d been when Joan
ne chose a college close to home, how melancholy when Kevin, with her encouragement, accepted the scholarship to Stanford. “The Boston area has more good schools than anywhere in the country,” Nick grumbled. “The world, maybe. Why California, of all places?”

  But she’d brought him around, just as she had on the matter of vacations. She loved to travel and he didn’t; he said the trips his work demanded were more than enough. Crowded airports, dim hotel rooms, packing and unpacking. Still, she simply must get away, she told him one winter early on.

  “How can we?” he said. “School. Little League. The whole production.”

  She flung the blanket off in exasperation. “The children. Always the children. Enough is enough, Nick. This is going too far. They’ll survive without us for a week or two.”

  “It’s just … I don’t see how we can manage it.”

  “Nick!” she shrieked. “They don’t have to take up every waking moment. Other parents go away.” Then, seeing his face turn grim, she changed her strategy. “I know. There’s Mrs. O’Malley.”

  “Who the hell is Mrs. O’Malley?”

  “A very nice woman from across the street.” They lived in town then, in the Back Bay. “I talk to her when I take the kids to the park. She babysits for people in the neighborhood. A chubby widow with time on her hands, and she can use the money. Let me arrange everything. Trust me, it’ll work out fine.”

  Thanks to Mrs. O’Malley, they went to Trinidad, and the following year to Mexico. Julia Willard considered Mrs. O’Malley one of her most brilliant strokes. Later, when the kids were old enough to have plans of their own, gentle coaxing sufficed. Yes, she would agree in a murmur, it was all whizzing by too fast; it seemed barely any time had elapsed between wandering through toy stores and worrying over SATs. All only yesterday. But it couldn’t be helped, could it? It was in the nature of things for children to break away, even in close families, even special children. He mustn’t give them a hard time. No wonder they always told her their plans first. They were afraid he’d fuss, she explained. Though up to now he’d never gone beyond any fussing she could handle.

  Late Sunday morning, having slept past ten, Nick Willard padded into the kitchen on bare feet. “Look, don’t get alarmed, sweetie.” Julia spun around and almost dropped the coffeepot.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. But I just called Joanne and she may have a little problem.”

  “What kind of problem?” Julia went pale and gripped the handle of the pot tighter. Joanne was in graduate school in Ann Arbor; on the phone, she mostly gave colorful accounts of the latest ventures of the theater arts program.

  “She’s been having tingling sensations in her legs and went to the health service. They’ll run some tests. It could be nothing at all, or then again it could be something.”

  “Something? Like what?”

  “Something neurological, I suppose.”

  Neither one mentioned the fainting spells Joanne had had when she was around twelve—Nick discovered that first too, nearly scaring Julia out of her wits. It was around the time she was urging him to let Kevin go on the wilderness program. The memory hung between them, unspoken. The doctors hadn’t found anything wrong, and after a while the spells stopped as unaccountably as they’d begun. What with all the upset, though, Kevin ended up staying home that summer.

  “I’ll call her right away,” Julia said as she slumped against the refrigerator.

  “Don’t bother. This was an hour ago, and she was leaving to meet friends. Going to some lake or other. They won’t be back till tomorrow night. Is there any coffee left?”

  When he reached for the pot her fingers whitened and resisted; he stepped back as if she might hurl it at him. She had thrown one of his clay flowerpots once, when he objected to Joanne’s first boyfriend, a newly arrived Korean boy who spoke hardly any English. “What can she possibly see in him? They can’t even have a conversation. What do you suppose they do when they’re alone?”

  “He plays the violin like an angel,” Julia said. “He’s so good I’m going to recommend him for the teen apprentice program at the symphony.”

  “Hah! And you say I go too far,” he sneered. She threw the pot then, aiming not at him but across the room. When he saw that it meant so much to her, he backed down. Joanne was only fifteen; it would pass soon enough.

  This time Julia didn’t throw anything. She loosened her grip and simply sat. “It must be serious, if she went to a doctor.” Joanne’s penchant for alternative medicine was an old story; they’d always suspected it was a reaction to her brother’s unqualified faith in medical science. The contrast had amused them in the past, but not today. “On the other hand, how sick can she be if she’s going away for two days?”

  “She may not be sick at all. She wasn’t even planning to mention it if I hadn’t called.”

  “She’d love the idea of Kevin and Martha living in Paris. She loved that summer program in Grenoble in high school. You didn’t even want her doing that.”

  “That was long ago. Look, Julia, how about we give it a rest for a while? Let’s get out. Let’s drive to the shore.”

  She agreed listlessly. What did it matter where they went, with Joanne’s health at stake? Early June was too cool to swim, but they walked along the beach, watching the surfers in wet suits skim and swoop on the waves. They made her think of sex, and again she wished they could return to an earlier chapter of their story, before it veered off on this unexpected path. She watched him, facing into the wind, hands in his jacket pockets, but he wouldn’t catch her gaze. Even out of doors the air was stiff. At last he asked about the choral group she hoped to book for next winter, and then Julia asked his advice about a new transmission for her Volvo. He mentioned the gruesome spate of violence in the high schools. Luckily such incidents were almost unknown when their kids were in school, he said. Julia only nodded. Talking about the children was no fun anymore, a game gone stale. Worse, it was skirting danger. He knew how she felt about Joanne. It was wrong to have favorites, especially when there were only two, yet she couldn’t help feeling closer to her daughter—dark and fine-boned, high-strung, a reminder of herself as a girl. Nick had wanted a daughter just like that, and he generally got what he wanted.

  On Monday Nick Willard came home early. When he heard Julia pull into the driveway he was prepared. He waited patiently in the bedroom, watching her change into shorts and a shirt, empty her purse, pin up her hair. He still liked looking at her, though without the same urgency. She didn’t speak, but she was often quiet when she first got home—she needed space, she said, after the daily frenzy of arrangements, schedules, phone calls. Finally she sank down beside him on the bed and took a deep breath. “A long day. How about you? Did you straighten everything out for the conference?”

  “I did. I set them straight at the office too. They won’t pull anything like that again. By the way, Kevin called.” He let the words hang teasingly while she sat, legs crossed, expectant. “He had some interesting news.”

  “Really? What?”

  He put an arm around her. “Guess.”

  “Come on, Nick, I’m not in the mood for games.”

  “Martha’s pregnant.”

  Her part was to show the joy befitting the occasion, but she was taken unawares; he watched her features shift into a querulous confusion. “Pregnant? That’s … Well, it’s wonderful. But … I’m kind of surprised. I didn’t quite count on being a grandmother. Yet, I mean.”

  It was true, they had never discussed grandchildren. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t imagined them. “I was surprised too. But it’s what young couples do, isn’t it? It doesn’t make us any older.”

  “I suppose not.” She sounded doubtful. Then she rallied, producing her eager look, head tilted, eyes wide. “So! A baby. When’s it due?”

  “Not till January, thereabouts. It’s very early. She did one of those home tests. Maybe it’ll look like Kevin.”

  He fell into reminiscing about Kevin as an infan
t, the golden-haired, ruddy baby of dreams, plump and succulent. He was lean now and his hair had darkened, but he was still striking. In college someone had once approached him about being a fashion model. That had caused a slight skirmish too: Julia found it amusing but Nick Willard was horrified. In the end, to his relief, Kevin had laughed it off, intent on pursuing his degree in microbiology. A good thing too, Nick said later; otherwise there’d be no plummy job at the National Institutes of Health.

  “Well,” Julia sighed, “it’s nice news. But it doesn’t change the Paris issue. People have babies in Paris every day.” She paused. “It would have dual citizenship.”

  “It’s better to have them at home. And then we could see it right away.”

  “We could fly over and visit.”

  That caught him off guard. He should have anticipated it. She was always ready to take off, ever since the days of the propitious Mrs. O’Malley. Now that they were freer, he obliged her every year or so—a walking tour in the Lake District, Greece, the Grand Canyon—though his own tastes ran more to a cottage on Cape Cod. The notion of visiting the kids in Paris did hold some intriguing possibilities, though, he had to admit … seeing the sights with the baby in tow. And later on, the remembering. … But at home as at the office, he preferred not to deviate, once he’d taken a position.

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Still, how often could we get to Paris in two years? Once? Twice at most?”

  Julia shrugged as if she didn’t much care. “I tried calling Joanne from work but she wasn’t home yet,” she said. “I’ll try again after dinner.”

  “It usually takes a week or so to get test results.” He made it sound like a warning. “Don’t make her more anxious by pestering her.”

  “I just want to see how she’s doing. Do you mind? Is that breaking any rules?”

  Dinner was strained, with the unspoken suspended between them like a murky scrim. Julia’s skin felt so tight that she retreated to a hot bath, using the aromatic oils Joanne had given her. Lavender was the most soothing. After a while the tension began to seep out of her and her strength returned. She wouldn’t be sabotaged. Even if they’d started out as his idea, they were her children too. And it was her life. She would hold fast, using discretion until she knew just how far he was prepared to go. Suddenly Nick knocked on the door, then came in. “Sorry, babe, but I had to tell you.” He sat on the edge of the tub, dipping his fingers in the scented water. “Joanne’s news wasn’t too good.”