The Hours Count by Jillian Cantor

Author:Jillian Cantor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

LATER, as I waited for Ed to come home from wherever it was he was, I smoked a cigarette and looked at the words Nurse Ames had scribbled on the paper. It was a man’s name and an address—in Brooklyn, I was fairly sure. The words seemed so innocent there on the paper, just scrawled out, not like something illegal, something that could kill me. I shivered at the thought.

David slept soundly on his mattress in the next room, and I went to the doorway and watched him. He was getting so big, and my heart folded with a love for him that felt larger, more all-consuming, than any other feeling I’d ever felt. What would happen to him should something happen to me? What would happen to him should I have another baby to care for?

The door opened and it startled me, and then I made my way back to the perfect blue couch. In the dark, only the glow of my cigarette illuminated the living room. “How was work?” I said to Ed as he walked into our apartment, a shadow.

He hung up his hat, turned on a light, and went straight for the kitchen, ignoring my question. I heard the vodka crackling over ice, and then he came and sat down at the opposite end of the couch from me and put his feet up on the coffee table. I took a slow drag on my cigarette and blew the smoke into the air in such a way that I could barely make out the features of his face. “How was work?” I asked again.

“Work was work.” He drained the glass of vodka and put it on the coffee table. I slipped a coaster underneath it and put my cigarette out in the ashtray.

“You’ve been lying to me,” I said quietly.

He laughed a little as if I’d startled him or amused him—I couldn’t tell. “And you’ve been lying to me,” he said with such certainty that I couldn’t breathe. What did he know? About the diaphragm? David’s therapy? The Catskills? Jake?

Before he could elaborate, I made a decision in an instant. It was self-preservation, not just for me but for David. “There’s going to be another baby,” I heard myself saying. I felt the scrap of paper in my palm and I crumpled it in my fist.

For a moment, the air was still, I could hear Ed breathing. And then he said, “You’ve been to the doctor?”

“Yes. Today.”

“Well, then, that is very good news.” He picked up his glass and walked back into the kitchen to refill it. I wanted to ask him more about what had happened at work, but if I asked him to explain his lies, then I worried he might ask me to explain mine.

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