The Shadow Wife

He’s married, she wanted to say. He’s overwhelmed by life already. I can’t burden him with one more thing. He can barely look me in the eye, much less be a father to my child.

“Where are you going?” Rebecca asked as she helped Joelle to sit up.

“I don’t know yet,” Joelle said, turning to dangle her legs over the side of the table. “Someplace I can start fresh with this baby.”

“Are you running away from something?” Rebecca probed.

“I don’t know.” Joelle shrugged. “No. Yes. Maybe.” She smiled an apology at the doctor for being so evasive. “The important thing is, can you be my obstetrician until I leave, Rebecca? I mean, without telling anyone? Or will that put you in too much of a bind?”

“I’ll be your doctor,” Rebecca said. “But people love you here, Joelle.” It seemed odd to hear the word love come from those ordinarily cool and dispassionate lips. “I hope you have a very good reason for going.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

As she was unlocking the outside door to her condo that evening, Tony, one-half of the gay couple who lived downstairs, poked his head out his front door.

“Joelle!” he said. “Come join us for dinner. We made stuffed portobello mushrooms and we got carried away. There’s more than we can eat.”

“Oh, thanks, Tony.” She smiled at him with a shake of her head. “Not tonight, I’m afraid.”

“Well, we’ll save you some, then,” Tony said, disappearing inside his condo again.

She walked up the stairs and into her own condo, remembering the last time she’d eaten with her neighbors. She’d made a huge pot of fish stew and invited Tony and Gary over to help her eat it. The three of them had stayed up half the night, drinking a little too much and singing oldies off-key. She liked those guys. They were by no means her closest friends, but they had potential. If she were staying in the area, maybe they would have liked being honorary daddies. Maybe even her labor coaches.

You’ve been watching too many sitcoms on TV, she told herself as she lifted the telephone receiver to check her voice mail. She had one message, the mechanical voice told her, and she pressed her code to hear it.

“Hello, Joelle, a.k.a. Shanti Joy,” a woman’s voice said.

Joelle frowned. Carlynn Shire?

“This is Carlynn Shire,” the woman said, answering her question. “I’ve been thinking about you, and was wondering why I haven’t heard from you. How is your friend doing? Would you still like me to see her? If you would, give me a call.” She left her number, and Joelle wrote it down on the cover of a catalog resting on the kitchen counter.

How strange, she thought with a bit of annoyance. Apparently Alan Shire had neglected to tell Carlynn he had asked Joelle not to call her. Yet, she was pleased to hear the older woman’s message.

Setting down her purse and appointment book, she dialed the number.

“Shire residence.” It was a man’s voice. For a moment she was afraid it might belong to Alan Shire, but then she remembered the man who had called to set up her first meeting with Carlynn. This was most certainly his voice.

“This is Joelle D’Angelo,” she said. “May I speak with Carlynn Shire, please?”

“Please hold for a moment,” the man said, and several minutes passed before Carlynn came on the line.

“Hello, Joelle!” she said. “How are you?”

“I’m all right, Carlynn, but I have to say I was surprised to hear from you.”

“Why is that?”

Joelle sat on a stool at the counter. “Maybe you didn’t know this,” she said carefully, “but your husband contacted me. He told me you were retired and having some health problems and would rather not be seeing people. That’s why I didn’t call. I didn’t want to bother you again.”

There was a moment of silence on the line. “Alan called you?” Carlynn asked.

“No, he came to see me at the hospital where I work.”

“And he said…?”

“He said you’re retired and ill, that healing takes too much out of you, that—”

“Oh, horsefeathers,” Carlynn said. “He’s an old worrywart, isn’t he? He’s right that I’m retired, and he’s right that I’m ill, and there are few cases I’d be willing to take on these days, but you touched me with the story of your friend Mara. I would truly like to see her, Joelle.”

“Thank you,” she said, liking Carlynn a great deal for remembering Mara’s name. “But, Carlynn…” She hesitated, wondering if she should bring this up. “Another thing your husband said concerned me. He said that talking to me would remind you of… I know you lost your sister right around the time I was born.”

“That was a very long time ago, Joelle.” Carlynn sounded completely unconcerned. “It overjoys me to see that a life I touched back then has flourished in spite of what I lost. So put that right out of your mind.”

“All right, I will,” Joelle said, thinking that Carlynn seemed quite capable of making her own decisions, despite her husband’s concerns.