Heartbeat Read online

  There was an instant of silent disbelief and then he exploded into the phone. “What? Why not? Was something wrong with you that he couldn't?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly as she sat down. She felt very old suddenly, and very tired, the emotions she had repressed all day suddenly rushed back at her and she felt drained as she listened to her husband. “Something was wrong. I didn't want to do it.”

  “So you chickened out?” He sounded horrified, and now he was furious, too, which upset her even more and made her even more angry.

  “If you want to put it that way. I decided I wanted to have our child. Most people would be flattered by that, or pleased, or something a little more human.” But they both knew he wasn't human on this subject.

  “I don't happen to be one of them, Adrian. I'm not touched … or flattered … I think you're a fool. And I think you're doing it to try to get at me in someway, but I've got news for you, I'm not going to let you do it.”

  “What are you talking about? You sound like a crazy person. This isn't a vendetta, for chrissake …it's a baby …you know, small person, made by you and me, blue and pink, cries occasionally. Most people can adjust to that, they don't act as though their lives are being threatened by a Mafia hit man.”

  “Adrian, I'm not amused by your sense of humor.”

  “And I am even less so by your sense of values. What is wrong with you? How could you leave me like this and just expect me to go out and get an abortion? It isn't the minor procedure you think it is, it isn't 'nothing.' It's something. It's a big something …and one of the reasons I didn't want to do it is because I love you.”

  “That's bullshit and you know it.” He sounded threatened and cornered and extremely frightened by everything she had just said to him, and Adrian realized they weren't going to solve it on the phone, and possibly not even in the near future. He was just going to have to calm down, and see that the baby wasn't going to ruin his life. But first, they were both going to have to stop being angry.

  “Why don't we talk about this calmly when you come home?” she said sensibly, but he was irate now.

  “There's nothing to talk about. Unless you come to your senses and get an abortion. I'm not going to discuss anything with you until you do. Is that clear?” He was screaming at her in the phone and he sounded like a madman.

  “Steven, stop it! Get a grip on yourself!” She spoke to him like a child who was out of control, but he was beyond being able to calm down. In his hotel room in Chicago, he was shaking with fury.

  “Don't tell me what to do, Adrian. You betrayed me!”

  “I did not betray you.” She almost laughed, he sounded so absurd, but the truth was, it wasn't funny. “It was an accident. I don't know how it happened or whose fault it was. It doesn't matter anymore. I'm not blaming you, or myself, or anyone. I just want to have the baby.”

  “You're out of your mind, and you don't know what you're talking about.” He sounded like someone she didn't know, as she closed her eyes and tried to stay calm.

  “At least I'm not hysterical. Why don't you just forget about it and we'll talk about it when you get home.”

  “I have nothing more to say to you, until you take care of it.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” She opened her eyes again. There was something odd in his voice that she had never heard before, a kind of chill that frightened her, and she had to remind herself that this was only Steven.

  “It means exactly what it sounds like. It's me or the baby. Get rid of it. Now. Adrian, I want you to go back to the doctor tomorrow and get an abortion.” A hand clutched her heart for a moment, and she wondered if he was serious, but she knew that he couldn't be. He couldn't make her choose between the baby or him, that was insane. And she knew he couldn't mean it.

  “Sweetheart …please …don't be like this … I can't go back … I can't … I just can't do it.”

  “You have to.” He sounded as though he were near tears and she wanted to put her arms around him and comfort him and tell him it was going to be all right. And one day, after the baby was born, he would laugh about how upset he had been at the beginning. But right now it was all he could think of. “Adrian, I don't want a baby.”

  “You don't have one yet. Why don't you just relax, and forget about it for a couple of days.” She was feeling exhausted, but calmer about it ever since she had made her decision.

  “I'm not going to relax until you get rid of it. I want you to have an abortion.” She sat there in silence, listening to him, for the first time in almost three years unable to give him what he wanted. Unable, and unwilling to, which upset him even more. And she just couldn't promise him that she would do as he told her.

  “Steven …please …” Tears suddenly welled up in her eyes again, for the first time since that morning. “I can't. Can't you understand that?”

  “All I understand is what you're doing to me. You are viciously and maliciously refusing to consider my feelings.” He remembered only too well how depressed his father got every time his mother had gotten pregnant again. He had held down two jobs for years, and finally he had three, until finally, mercifully, he was practically dead of cirrhosis. And by then all the children were gone anyway, and his life was over. “You don't care how I feel, Adrian. You don't give a damn about me. All you want is your goddam baby.” He was crying now, and Adrian wondered what she had done. She just didn't understand it. He had said he might be willing to have children eventually, when they were “well set,” but he had never said he hated them, he had never told her he absolutely wouldn't have them. “Well, you can have your baby, Adrian. You can have it …but you can't have me …” he sobbed into the phone, and she was crying too as she listened.

  “Steven, please. …” But as she said the words he hung up, and the phone went dead as she held it. She couldn't believe how upset he had been, how frantic, and for the next two hours she tortured herself wondering if she should have the abortion. If it meant that much to him, if it threatened him so deeply, what right did she have to force him to have the baby? And yet what right did she have to kill the baby because a grown man couldn't cope with the prospect of being a father? Steven could adjust, he could learn to handle it, he would discover eventually that she didn't love him any less, perhaps she would love him more, and his life would not be over. She couldn't give the baby up, she reminded herself. She remembered again what it had been like going to the doctor and preparing to have the abortion, and she knew she just couldn't do it. She was going to have their baby, and Steven was just going to have to accept it. She would take full responsibility for it, all he had to do was sit back and relax and not let it make him completely crazy.

  She was still telling herself that when she drove back to work at eleven o'clock. And when she got home after midnight she played back her machine to see if he had called, but he hadn't. And she was still upset about it the next day when she went to work and called his office and asked what plane he was coming in on, and it was perfect. He was due in at two o'clock, and she would have plenty of time to go to the airport and pick him up, and hopefully by that night everyone would have calmed down, and life could begin to get back to normal. As normal as it was going to be for a while anyway. Sooner or later they were going to have to make the ordinary adjustments to the fact that she was pregnant, the way other couples did, buying bassinets and building nurseries, and getting ready for their babies. Just the thought of it made her smile as she went back to work and forced herself not to think of Steven.

  Everyone stood on the set and watched Sylvia get killed that afternoon. John visited her in jail, pretending to be her lawyer. “Vaughn” appeared to be utterly amazed when she saw him, and moments later, unseen by the guard who had left them alone in a holding cell, he had his hands around her neck, and she was dead. She made wonderful sounds as John strangled her. It was a great scene, and Bill was enormously pleased with all of them as he watched it. And then the moment came to say good-bye to Sylvia after they wer
e off the air, and suddenly everyone was crying. She had been on the show for a year, and they were all going to miss her. She had been easy to work with, and even the other women liked her. The director had ordered champagne and they handed Bill a paper cup too, as he stood on the sidelines and watched as the soap opera seemed to become real, and Stanley stood there watching them all and feeling awkward. Eventually, Bill tried to slip away, but Sylvia saw him before he went and she went over to him quietly and said something no one else could hear, and he smiled and raised his glass to her, and then turned and raised it to Stanley.

  “Good luck, you two. Have a great life in New Jersey. And don't forget to write,” he teased Sylvia, and kissed her on the cheek as she started to cry again, knowing that she was taking a tremendous chance on Stanley. He had rented a white stretch limousine to take them from the studio to the airport. They were taking the red-eye to Newark that night, and her bags were already packed and in the car. She had already given up her apartment. She looked longingly at Bill as he left the set, and without looking back, he returned to his office. It had been a long week for him, but everything had ended well finally and he was actually going to take the weekend off, and take it easy. And as Bill drove home right after the show, Adrian was on the way to the airport. All she could think of was what she was going to say to Steven.

  All Adrian saw as she watched Steven get off the plane was the look in his eyes when he saw her. He walked straight toward her without saying a word, his eyes full of hostility and questions.

  “Why did you come here?” he shot at her, still furious after their conversation the night before.

  “I wanted to pick you up,” she answered gently. She tried to take his briefcase from him, to give him a hand, but he wouldn't let her.

  “You didn't need to do that. I'd rather you hadn't.”

  “Come on, Steven … be fair …”

  “Fair?” He stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the airport. “Fair? You're asking me to he fair? After what you're doing to me?”

  “I'm not doing anything to you. I'm trying to do my best to cope with something that happened. It happened to both of us. And I just don't think it's fair to make me do something so upsetting.”

  “What you're doing is a lot worse.” He started walking toward the exit as she followed him, wondering where he was going. She had left her car in the garage, and he was heading for the taxis.

  “Steven, where are you going?” He was already outside the terminal, and he had just pulled open the door of a taxi. “What are you doing?” She was suddenly starting to panic. He was acting like someone she didn't know. And she was frightened by what it all meant. She couldn't understand it. “Steven …” The driver was watching them with obvious irritation.

  “I'm going back to the apartment….”

  “So am I. That's why I came to the airport.”

  “…to pick up my things. I rented a studio in a hotel until you come to your senses.” He was blackmailing her. He was leaving her until she got rid of the baby.

  “For chrissake …Steven …please …” But he slammed the door in her face, locked it, and gave the driver the address, and a moment later the cab pulled away from the curb and left her standing there,staring at them in disbelief, wondering where her life was going.

  She couldn't believe what he was doing to her or that he would actually leave her. But when she got to the apartment, he had already packed three suitcases, two tennis rackets, his golf clubs, and a whole other suitcase full of papers.

  “I don't believe you're doing this.” She stared around her in utter disbelief. “You can't be serious.”

  “I am,” he said coolly. “Very much so. Take as long as you want to make up your mind, you can call me at the office. I'll be back when you get rid of the baby.”

  “And if I don't?”

  “I'll come back for the rest of my things when you let me know.”

  “Simple as that?” Something deep inside her was beginning to burn, but another part of her wanted to crawl into a hole and die, but the terror didn't show as she looked at her husband. “You're behaving like a complete lunatic. I hope you know that.”

  “I'm not aware of that. And as far as I'm concerned you have violated any basis of trust and decency in this marriage.”

  “By having our baby?”

  “By going against something you know I feel deeply about.” He sounded so uptight and so prim, she wanted to hit him.

  “All right. I'm human. I changed. But I think we can do this. We have a lot to offer any child. And I think anyone else would think so, too, by any normal standards.”

  “I don't want a child.”

  “And I don't want an abortion just because you think you don't like children and you don't want it to interfere with your trip to Europe.”

  “That's a low blow.” He looked highly insulted. “The trip to Europe has nothing to do with it. It's the entire picture. This baby will deprive us of a life-style we've worked our asses off for, and I'm not willing to give that up on a whim, or because you're too scared to get an abortion.”

  “I'm not too scared, goddammit,” she screamed at him, “I want the baby. Haven't you figured that out yet?”

  “All I've figured out is that you're doing this because you want to get at me.” In his eyes, it was the final treason, the ultimate betrayal.

  “Why would I do a thing like that?” she asked as he checked his closet again, to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything he wanted.

  “I don't know,” he responded. “I haven't figured that out yet.”

  “And you're really telling me that if I keep the baby, you're leaving me for good?” He nodded and looked her in the eye as he did, and all Adrian could do was shake her head, and sit down on the steps to the upstairs as he carried his bags out. “You're really leaving me, aren't you?” She started to cry again, and she sat on the stairs watching him wrestle with his bags, unable to believe he was really leaving her, but he was. After two and a half years of marriage, he was walking out on her because she was having his baby. It was difficult to believe, harder still to understand, but as she stared at him in disbelief, he carried the last of his suitcases to the car and came back to look at her from the doorway.

  “Let me know what you decide.” His eyes were like ice, his face perfectly calm as she sobbed and walked toward him.

  “Please don't do this to me …I'll be good … I promise … I won't even let it cry …Steven, please …don't make me give it up …and don't leave me …I need you….”She clung to him like a child and he took a step back as though she revolted him, and it only made her feel more panicked.

  “Get hold of yourself, Adrian. You have a choice in this. It's up to you.”

  “No it's not.” She was crying almost uncontrollably. “You're asking me to do something I can't do.”

  “You can do anything you want,” he said coolly to her, and she turned on him then with a look of anger.

  “So can you. You can adjust to it if you want to.”

  “That's the whole point,” he said as he looked down at her, “I already told you, Adrian, I don't want to.” He picked up his tennis rackets then, and with a last look at her, without another word, he closed the door behind him, as Adrian stood staring at the spot where he had been. It was hard to believe he had actually done this to her. He had left her.

  THERE WAS NO SMELL OF BACON WHEN SHE AWOKE this Saturday morning. No breakfast tray waiting for her. No omelet made by loving hands. There were no good smells, good sounds, friendly noises. There was nothing. Only silence. She was alone. And the realization hit her like a weight on her heart almost as soon as she woke up. She stirred in the bed, looking for him, and then just as suddenly she remembered. Steven had left her.

  She had called in sick for the late news the night before. She had been too upset to go anywhere, and she had just lain on her bed and cried until she finally fell asleep with the lights on. She had woken up again at three a.m., peeled off her cl
othes, turned off the lights, and put on her nightgown, and now as she woke up, she felt like an alcoholic waking up from a two-week binge. Her eyes were swollen, her mouth was dry, her stomach was in her throat, and her whole body felt battered. It had been a hell of a night, a hell of a week. In fact, it had been a miserable ten days ever since she had discovered she was pregnant. And she still had the choice he had given her. She could still have the abortion and he would come back, but if she did, what would they have now? Mutual resentment and anger and eventually hatred. She knew that if she gave up the baby for him, she would eventually hate him, and if she didn't, he would always resent her. In one little week, they had managed to destroy what she had always considered a fairly decent marriage.

  She lay in bed for a long time, thinking of him, and wondering what had made him do it. Obviously his memories of his childhood had been far worse than she had ever realized, and he had been truly traumatized, not just turned off, by the prospect of having children. It was not something that was going to change overnight, or maybe ever. And he would have had to want to change it very badly, which he didn't.

  The phone rang then, and for a desperate moment, she prayed that it was Steven. He had come to his senses, changed his mind … he wanted her …and the baby…. She picked it up with a hopeful croak, and a crestfallen look. It was her mother. She called once every few months and Adrian never enjoyed speaking to her anymore. Their conversations had always centered around her sister's glowing deeds, which, as far as Adrian was concerned, were few, and unpleasant references to Steven. Most of all, her mother made not-so-veiled comments about Adrian's many failings. She hadn't called, hadn't come home for Christmas in years, had forgotten her father's birthday, her parents' anniversary, had moved to California, married someone they didn't like, and had compounded it by failing to have children. At least her mother had given up asking her if she and Steven had seen a doctor.

  Adrian assured her now that everything was fine, wished her a belated happy Mother's Day from the week before, realizing that she had failed yet again, and told her mother that she'd been working so hard, she'd forgotten what day it was. Not to mention the fact that she had her own problems.