The Life You Longed For

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Authors: Maribeth Fischer
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second—”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWould you tell me if you had? If you ever—”
    â€œGoddamnit.” He turned away from her. “How can you ask me this? You are the reason Jack is alive.”
    She began crying again. “What if they take him away from us, Stephen?”
    â€œThey can’t, Grace.”
    â€œYes, they can, Stephen. You don’t know.”
    â€œYou haven’t done anything wrong!” he bellowed. “You are torturing yourself with this, Grace.” He lowered his voice. “Please. Nothing is going to happen.”
    She wondered if he really believed this. She thought of Noah telling her how along rural airport runways that were plagued by flocks of birds, loudspeakers played recordings of distress calls made by crows in an effort to ward the birds off. She thought that Stephen’s voice was like that now, as if the sound of his anger alone could push this horrible accusation away.
    Â 
    From the doorway of the walk-in closet, Stephen tossed his shirt onto the pile of dirty clothes by the bathroom door. Grace stared at Stephen’s arms and chest and thought what a beautiful man he was and how she didn’t deserve him. “We’re an open book, Grace,” he said as he yanked a worn T-shirt over his head and flicked off the closet lights. “Let them investigate us all they want.” He climbed into bed, handing her the pint of Häagen-Dazs that he had picked up on the way home. She thought of how in Stephen’s family they always ate ice cream when they were upset, as if to numb themselves from the inside out. They’d eaten it for dinner the July night Stephen’s dad walked out on his wife and sons for a woman young enough to be his daughter; they’d eaten it when their mother announced that she was remarrying a man neither Stephen nor Jeff could stand; and they ate it again when she left that man for another.
    Years later, the night Grace and Stephen finally—after how many experts, how many trips to different hospitals—received the diagnosis for Jack, they sat at the kitchen table, wordlessly passing a pint of butter pecan ice cream back and forth to each other. And only yesterday, sitting in the family room after the trip to Baltimore, they’d played the scene out again.
    Now tonight. Grace imagined that this was the taste of betrayal: cold and rich and so achingly sweet that for a moment— maybe —you forget how much you are about to lose.

Seven
    G race sat straight against the passenger seat, her shoulders pushed back, her hands in her lap. Knees pressed together beneath her gray skirt. It was like being in Catholic school again: obeying rules that made no sense.
    She stared out the window at the city blurring by. How ugly it was here: miles of squat round oil refineries, trash heaps, and high-rise parking garages. And then the airport, planes suturing the sky. The large black letters of the word PREGNANT ? glared from a shabby billboard followed by a 1-800 number. Grace dropped her eyes back to her lap. Did it not count for anything that she had wanted each of her children? Stephen reached from the steering wheel and squeezed her hand. “I know,” he said. “It’s not fair.” She nodded, feeling both grateful and guilty. She didn’t deserve him. She squeezed his hand in return. Like a coma patient, she thought, and this was the only way to communicate.
    They were on their way to a lawyer’s.
    Grace had spent the last two days terrified to let the kids out of her sight. She didn’t go out, didn’t get dressed, didn’t answer the phone. She couldn’t stop crying. She canceled Jack’s therapy appointments. She didn’t trust anyone. She didn’t want him near the hospital. She sat at the computer in her robe and a pair of Stephen’s sweat socks, reading the Munchausen by Proxy Home Page, which had a database of over four hundred articles about

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