The Other Life Read Free

As evidenced by the scar on her wrist, it hadn’t been her first suicide attempt—just her best.
    Lewis looked up from his newspaper. “Do you want me to pack his lunch?”
    “I’ve got it,” she said.
    He went back to his reading. “You know your shirt is stained?”
    Quinn looked at her top, realizing it was foolish to think a stain right in the middle of her expanding chest could go unnoticed. She went down the basement steps quickly, as she always did, trying to pretend it was the most casual act. Quinn had long ago decided that keeping her secret required behaving as if there were nothing at all peculiar about her circumstances. That way she could live as normal a life as anybody else.
    The washer and dryer were in a small, square laundry room Quinn and Lewis had built in the far corner of the basement. The two walls that were part of the foundation were concrete, and the other two were the drywall that had been erected to create the space. Lewis had painted the whole thing a pale peach, leaving the dark wood ironing board untouched. He had offered to oil the hinges so that Quinn could actually use it, but she made some excuse, telling him that it was too close to the corner to be practical, and she preferred to just leave it intact as a historic artifact.
    She opened the ordinary, freestanding ironing board and laid her purple blouse over it. As she worked the hot iron over the seams and nosed it around the buttons, her back to the wall, she sensed the opening in the foundation like another presence. It was as if her other life—the one where all her energy was spent trying to keep Eugene from coming unglued—were buzzing by just a few feet away.
    She finished ironing the blouse and changed into it, dropping the stained one into the empty washing machine. Quinn put her hand on her swelling tummy, excited to think that in a matter of hours she and Lewis would see their new baby on the sonogram screen, a fuzzy image in shades of gray. A little brother or sister for Isaac. She closed her eyes, picturing a newborn swaddled in soft cotton, and her nipples tingled in anticipation. Funny how trained her body was to react this time around.
     
     
    LATER, AS SHE LAY in the small, darkened room in the radiology department of the hospital where her amnio would be done, the technician squirted heated jelly onto her stomach, and Quinn reached for Lewis’s hand.
    The radiology technician, a small woman with a Caribbean accent who had introduced herself as Jeanette, ran the transducer over Quinn’s flesh. Immediately, the quick whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the baby’s heartbeat filled the room, and Lewis smiled.
    “You don’t want to know the baby’s gender, is that right?” Jeanette asked without taking her eyes from the screen.
    Quinn hesitated. She had told her doctor she didn’t want to know, but that was more for Lewis than herself. In fact, she would have found it helpful to know, so that she could get everything ready before the baby was born. But when Lewis told her how excited he was about the idea of being surprised, she capitulated.
    It wasn’t out of weakness, but generosity. In fact, she considered the ability to give her greatest asset. It took a certain power of will, she reasoned, to put her own needs last and take care of those she loved.
    Her mother, who had often been the recipient of this self-sacrifice, had labeled Quinn “a pleaser.” It was clear to Quinn that this was intended as neither an insult nor a compliment, but the acceptance of an unfortunate flaw, such as astigmatism or lactose intolerance.
    Quinn looked at her husband, wondering if he might change his mind about finding out the sex of the baby.
    “We want to be surprised,” Lewis said to Jeanette.
    “Can you already tell from these images?” Quinn added.
    Jeanette smiled. “Mama, you shouldn’t ask what you don’t want to know.”
    Right, Quinn thought, and smiled back. She couldn’t believe she had almost let curiosity get the