The Shadow Wife

JOELLE WAS TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS PREGNANT AND ATTENDING her first childbirth class, which was held in one of the large, carpeted meeting rooms at the hospital. Gale Firestone, the nurse practitioner in Rebecca’s office, was the instructor, but everyone else in the room was a stranger to her, and she was the only pregnant woman there without a partner. A couple of the women had other women with them instead of husbands, but she had no one.

Her mother was going to be her birth partner, and Ellen was going to sit in on childbirth classes in the Berkeley area to prepare herself for that role, but she would only be able to attend a couple of the classes in Monterey. Joelle told her that didn’t matter, just as long as she got herself to Monterey when she went into labor, and her mother had promised to be there for her.

They were watching a movie in the class tonight, and everyone was either sitting or lying on the floor of the dimly lit room, absorbed in the film. Joelle found it hard to concentrate on the images on the screen. She’d seen birth movies before, and she’d seen the real thing plenty of times, given that she worked in the maternity unit. But lying on the floor, a pillow beneath her head, she was having difficulty putting herself in the place of the spread-legged woman in the movie.

She was beginning to have nightmares about labor and delivery. The dreams were always the same: during labor in one of the birthing rooms, she would get a raging headache. Liam would be there, and he would run out of the room, and Rebecca and the nurses would abandon her, as well, saying they had other patients to take care of. She would be left there with that terrible headache, about to give birth, and no one to help her. She felt abandoned in the dream, just as she was feeling abandoned in her life.

The woman on the movie screen was panting now, and Joelle closed her eyes, her mind wandering to the visit the day before with Carlynn and Liam in Mara’s room. Mara had actually made a sound while Liam was playing the guitar, a “woo-woo” sort of sound, and she and Liam had looked at each other, stunned.

Did that sound mean something? Was Mara trying to sing? To communicate? When she lifted her arm in the air, was she reaching out to Liam? Or were they just seeing what they wanted to see?

Joelle’s bulging tummy was an ever-growing object in that room, something none of them discussed, and she wondered if at some point Mara might notice it. Would she ever have the ability to think to herself, “Joelle is pregnant,” and would she wonder then who the father was? She wished she knew how many questions Mara wanted to ask but was unable to. But maybe there were none. Maybe that was why she was able to smile so easily.

Joelle was beginning to have a terrible fear, one she hadn’t voiced to Carlynn, and she wondered if Liam shared it with her. If Mara were to get better, but not well enough to truly function in the world outside the nursing home, would that be a positive thing? What if she could only get well enough to know what she was missing? Right now, Mara was not suffering, and there were moments when Joelle wondered if they should be tampering with the blissful ignorance she seemed to enjoy.

No matter what was happening to Mara, though, there was a miracle occurring in that room. The miracle was that, as long as she and Liam were with Carlynn and Mara, they could talk and laugh together. Sometimes Joelle felt as though Carlynn was saving her life all over again.

35

Big Sur, 1967

A THICK WHITE FOG WRAPPED ITSELF AROUND THE CABIN THE following morning, and Carlynn woke up before her sister or Alan. It was chilly, and she snuggled closer to her husband, but she was too wide awake to stay in bed for long. She nudged Alan gently, hoping he would wake up and go out with her to get something for breakfast, but he was snoring softly, the way he did when he was deeply asleep.

Carefully, she extracted herself from his arms and got out of the narrow bed. She opened her suitcase, which was resting on the floor of the dimly lit cabin, and pulled out a pair of socks, her jeans and a heavy sweater and went into the bathroom to change.

She should go back to the commune, she thought as she brushed her teeth. She needed to say a real goodbye to Penny and the other people she had befriended over the last week. She’d forgotten to leave the antibiotics for anyone who needed them. And she wanted to hold the baby one more time. If she were being honest with herself, she would have to admit that Shanti Joy was her primary motivation for wanting to go back to Cabrial. Since she and Alan had started the center, she didn’t see as many babies as she had as a pediatrician, and she missed them.

She left the bathroom, her flannel nightgown bundled in her arms, and walked across the bedroom to put it in her suitcase.

“Good morning.”