“How’s my baby?” he asked, stroking her head. Ella’s hair was put up loosely with a large barrette. In her reading position, her gaze downcast, she had a double chin.
“How many times did you do it?” she asked.
Ted frowned, more stunned by her angry tone than the bizarre question itself.
She repeated herself. “How many times, Ted?”
“What? Do what?” No one talked to him this way. Certainly not his wife. Except for the excellent news about the house, the day had been unrelenting. All afternoon, he’d been going back and forth with some idiot lawyers about a filing, trying to keep some uppity analysts from fucking up, and managing nervous clients who didn’t understand elementary principles of corporate taxation. This was no time for PMS-type bullshit. He had no energy for this. There hadn’t been time for dinner.
“How many times, Ted?” Ella glared at him.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Did you fuck around? I need to know,” Ella said, her voice screeching. She refused to back down or soften her tone.
Aghast, Ted froze. His mouth opened, exposing his lower teeth.
“I have genital herpes.” She threw the papers at him. The sheets flew about, cascading around his black monk strap shoes. He hadn’t taken them off yet. “I must have gotten it before I was pregnant. I don’t know. The doctor doesn’t know. She doesn’t think it’s my first outbreak, however. I. . . I just don’t understand.”
Ted didn’t look at her. He ran his left hand through his hair. He did this when he was uncomfortable or about to tell a lie. Ella knew all his tics. If he were holding a drink, he would sip something after a lie, as though he could wash it down.
“Can you be a friend to me right now and explain how this can be? I have never been with anyone else but you. You know that.”
Her first time, his penis had frightened her. She’d never seen one before. It looked alive, and she thought the thing was larger than it was supposed to be. He wanted to put it inside her—that was lovemaking, she had to remind herself—the natural course of it. She had wanted just the kissing and the fondling of her breasts to continue. He kept guiding her to touch him there, but she couldn’t help jerking back her hand whenever he wanted that. For her first time, she went to his apartment. Ted had thoughtfully placed a yellow towel beneath her for the bleeding. She had read about the possibility of the hymen tearing for virgins but had forgotten it somehow. It had hurt. Afterward, he’d wanted her to shower with him. He’d washed her hair tenderly with the Head & Shoulders he kept in his bathroom. The scent alone of that pearly blue shampoo could remind her of that night. He ran to the deli after the shower to buy her pads, and he returned instantly, it seemed, with a packet of Kotex and a tub of vanilla ice cream, which he fed her with a wooden spoon shaped like a child-size tongue depressor. Before they fell asleep, he told her that he wanted her to be his wife, promising never to love anyone else the same way. In her mind, there was no question that she would want to have him as her only lover. Her body was his to have, to give him happiness. In the morning, he wanted to do it again, and it hurt less that time.
Ella’s eyes filled with tears, but she was so tired of crying.
“Oh, shit, shit, shit,” he said, clenching his fists. He wanted to hit something. Ted measured his breathing, staring at the blue-and-green diamond pattern of the living room carpet.
“It is what it is, then.” Ella covered her face with her hands.
Ted sat at the edge of the armchair and leaned his head into his hands.
There was no denial, and Ella felt remarkably clear.
“You fuck. You fucker. You did this to our child.” She had no idea how to use these words. She’d never liked the sound of these kinds of words, how they interrupted the flow of all the other words that didn’t offend. But she found herself imitating Ted’s way of talking, the way he spoke on the phone to work when he was at home. Not knowing how to sound angry herself, she had borrowed his style.
Ted couldn’t move his neck. The words just kept striking him over and over again.
“My baby could be blind because of you. You fuck, you fucker.” Her shoulders stiffened, but, unable to stand very well, she put her hands on her hips to steady herself. The yelling made her feel worse. What was the point of this anger? Nothing could be done.
“Blind?” Ted glanced up. He didn’t know he had herpes, but it was true that he had screwed someone who’d invariably given it to him.