Curtain Up
A herpes scare wasn’t even the worst part of my day.
To my left, a turtle-shaped lady with wrinkly cheeks and short, stringy hair knitted a baby sweater out of pink yarn. By the window, a slouching twenty-year-old fuckboy with a backward Celtics hat and faded neck tattoo played Fortnite with his phone at full volume. Next to the receptionist’s desk, a fourteen-year-old blond girl with doe eyes and a baby bump thumbed through a pamphlet about contraceptives. Toward the back of the room near the exit sat Beth and me—a late-twenties couple comprised of a tallish-but-burly strawberry blonde dude with an unkempt beard and a tight-fitting Phantom of the Opera T-shirt and a fantastically fit, freckle-faced redhead wearing black Adidas jogging pants and neon green Asics. Our paths, as disparate as they were, had all led us to the same little cornflower blue waiting room on a busy Tuesday morning to sit in awkward, judgmental silence, exchange side-eyed glances, and wonder, I wonder what these people are here for.
While Beth filled out her paperwork, I pulled out my phone, closed the “Hey You” text from Kay, and Googled “genital herpes.” The images that flooded my feed twisted my stomach into a painful knot. Nasty shit like bulbous discs on bright red labia and half-erect penises oozing pus. I almost gagged, but at the same time, I was (slightly) relieved, because the “little white spots” Beth had noticed in the shower an hour earlier didn’t sound nearly as bad as the disgusting clusters of blisters on my screen.
“Bethany Patrick?”
My heart paused. Beth and I looked at each other, stood up, and walked toward a salty-haired nurse with heavy eyelids and ruby red lipstick.
“Please,” Beth said, “just call me Beth.”
“Fine,” the nurse said. “This way.”
Solemnly, we approached the heavy steel door that led toward the little room with the exam table and the crinkly sanitary paper and the tongue depressors and the unflattering fluorescent light—the room that would seal our fate. I hadn’t been too nervous before, but the moment we heard Beth’s name, I began biting down on the callus inside my cheek, and my mind began to race: What if it IS herpes—what do we do then? Can you catch herpes if you use condoms? Should I get tested, too? How will I keep her calm when I’m here freaking out?
But just as we got to the door, Beth put her hand on my forearm and said, “Actually, Mick, I’m just going to go in myself right now, okay?”
“Oh. O…..K.”
We’d gone to appointments together before, like when we’d had pregnancy scares, or when we wanted to collaborate on another medication that would surely curb my depression “this time.” So, when she sprung this on me, I was curious. Nevertheless, if this was how she anted me to support her—by giving her privacy— that’s what I’d do. So I went back to my seat, and Beth went away.
Moments to myself were seeping cracks for my mental health. Anytime I daydreamed about what my life would’ve been like if I’d had the guts to go to the right college, take the big job, or chase The Goose, those cracks would widen just enough to drain me of whatever faux happiness I’d managed to find in the trivial: My sugar-saturated caramel latte. A lazy single in my slow-pitch softball game. A Zits comic strip that made me snicker for a second. Those were all welcome distractions from the self-loathing I’d otherwise mired myself in. Had I chosen this path? Sure. Did I regret it? You bet your ass I did. Could I alter course? I guess. But was it worth disrupting everything with a colossal decision that would inevitably bring the Red-Faced Banshee out of its slumber to vanquish my soul anew?
Ehh. Packing up all my shit would be a lot of work.
I sat in my cold wooden chair, my right heel bouncing up and down as it does when it’s bursting with nervous energy, while the population in the waiting room continued to thin out. One by one, they all went out back. Neck Tattoo Fuckboy. Doe-Eyed Teen Slut. Wrinkly Turtle Lady. Before long, I was all alone with my destructive thoughts, “Genital Herpes” in my search history, and an “HPV is Not Your Friend” poster gawking at me from the opposite wall. How long does this shit take? I thought.
I pulled out my phone to text Kay back when the door opened. It was the salty-haired nurse with heavy eyelids and ruby red lipstick. But Beth wasn’t with her.
“Mister Patrick, come back here with me, please.”
I stood up, put my phone in the back pocket of my jeans, and followed her through the heavy steel door, down twisty hallways, and into the exam room with the unflattering fluorescent light. Beth was on the exam table wearing a hospital gown and in full-on blubbers. Her face was a radish, her eyes were clamped shut, and her mouth was cracked open and bellowing loud, desperate sobs, unable to form a coherent word.
Shit. Maybe it is herpes. Or something worse.
“What’s going on?” A ball of emptiness spun in my gut.
“You wanna tell him?” The nurse had a flatness and disconnect in her voice she’d clearly developed from years of like encounters with hysterical young women and distressed young men on her crinkly-papered table; this was just another boring day at the office for her. “Or do you want me to tell him?”
Still unable to speak, Beth just shook her head. The nurse hesitated long enough for me to say, “Can someone just tell me?”
“Mister Patrick, your wife is pregnant,” the nurse said impatiently, failing—or, perhaps, not caring—to recognize the magnitude of the statement she’d blurted out with such indifference.
“For real?” I said, incredulous. I glanced at my wife’s scrunched-up face. Beth nodded and wiped a thin film from under her nose, then she looked away and fixed her narrow, bloodshot eyes on a “Hang in There” poster of a tiny gray kitten dangling from a clothesline. I fixed my own eyes on that freckle in the middle of her forehead I used to think was so cute.
“For real,” Nurse Salty Hair said.
My frazzled brain searched frantically for the right response while my eyes popped out of my face and my jaw hung helplessly on its hinges. All I could force my mouth to say was, “How far along?”
“About six weeks,” the nurse said.
“And the…spots?”
“Bartholin’s cysts. They’re harmless.” She slipped her pen behind her ear. “I’ll give you two a minute to talk.”
She left abruptly, leaving a void in the room Beth and I could only fill with awkward tension.
“Hey,” I said to her forehead freckle after what felt like an hour of silence (it was probably only about two minutes). She continued peering at the little gray kitten.
I leaned against the exam table and took her hand. She was still trembling from the unexpected news, and I hoped my “big ol’ bear paws,” as she used to call them, would calm her a little.
“I know this isn’t exactly what we wanted,” I said, “but this might actually be a good thing.”
My brother always gave me crap for trying to sugar-coat everything. But Beth knew I’d been depressed and desperate for a sense of purpose for longer than either of us could remember. She knew our relationship had begun to crumble, pebble by pebble, as a result. So, I couldn’t help but consider that a child in our lives, as twisted as the thought may seem to an emotionally stable person, might give me what I’d been missing for so long. And it might provide us that connection to each other that had long been lost.
Instead, Beth shot me a look of irritated confusion. Or confused irritation or something. She never wanted kids, and she knew I knew that. So, the dream that she would carry this child to term was as fantastical as those I’d had years ago when I used to dream big.
Predictably, she blurted, “I’m not keeping it, man.”
“What?” I wasn’t surprised, but I still wanted to hear her reasoning out loud.
“I’m not going to let it, like, wreck my body! I’m not going to let it ruin my life! I’m not going to be one of those moms who just live for their kids! I don’t want this, man!”
I took a deep breath, chewed the inside of my cheek the way I do when I want to say something but can’t, and nodded. The little gray kitten was looking at me now.
“Well,” I said with a tight-faced shrug. “At least you don’t have herpes. That’s good news.”
The bad news?
We hadn’t had sex in six months.
