24. Greer
Greer
He sets his bag down in the front hall and looks at me on the couch in the soft cotton tunic and leggings I changed into at five, with the laptop closed beside me and the phone tucked under a pillow on the chair across the room.
"You haven't eaten," I say.
"No."
"I made you a sandwich an hour ago. It's in the fridge. Sit."
He sits on the couch beside me. I get the sandwich from the fridge — turkey on the soft bread from the bakery on the corner, with the mustard he likes — and bring it on a plate with a glass of water.
He eats half of it in three bites, sets the plate on the coffee table, and puts both his hands flat on his thighs.
We do not talk for the next ten minutes.
The radiator in the corner hums. Outside the window the South End is quiet except for the soft thunk of somebody's recycling bin going down a stoop somewhere on the block.
After ten minutes he picks up the sandwich and eats the rest of it, drinks the water, and sets both back on the plate.
He says, into the room: "How many calls did you get today?"
"Twelve. Two from my mother. Three from old friends from the Children's Hospital residency who saw the piece. Four from numbers I don't have in my contacts."
"The other three."
"Lena. Indie's foundation board chair. A recruiter from the Pittsburgh Penguins' medical staff."
"The board chair?"
"My name is on the spring benefit committee list and the program for the May gala. She called to ask, as a courtesy, what I'd like the foundation to do with both. She did not ask me a single question about Indie."
"And?"
"I told her to take my name off both. She said thank you and she was very kind."
"A Pittsburgh recruiter? What was that about?"
"Asked if I'd consider a phone conversation in May after the season ends. Said the head PT job there will be open in June."
He nods. He does not look at me.
I say, quietly, "I am thinking about resigning before the licensing board gets involved."
He turns his head slowly and looks at me.
"Greer."
"The board has thirty days to open an inquiry once a complaint is filed.
There is no complaint yet, but there will be; my employer is my partner's employer, my partner is sixteen years older than me, and my partner is also my best friend's father.
Somebody in this town is going to type that into a webform and click submit in the next two weeks.
If I resign before they get the complaint, I keep my license.
If I wait, I am defending it through the inquiry. "
"What does Priya say?"
"Priya has not, in eleven years, lost a PT to a board inquiry. She thinks she can handle mine. She has also told me, in writing, that her ability to protect me ends at the door of her office, and the licensing board is not in her office."
"Greer."
"Yes."
"If you resign, the next job you take is the one you take because you had to leave the last one. The licensing board is not going to be more sympathetic to a PT who walked away on her own than to a PT who stayed and answered their questions."
"I know."
"So tell me why you do that."
I do not, for a long second, answer. He is waiting for the answer I have not let myself say out loud yet.
I say it.
"Because if I am not at the building, you have one less thing to defend."
He closes his eyes for half a second.
"Greer. You earned this job. You walked into Priya's office in October and walked out as the head PT of the Boston Barons. You did the work. We are not, in any version of this, taking that from you too."
"Kieran."
"No."
"What if it is the right move?"
"It is the move that lets the people in this town write about you the way they want to write about you. The move that gives the licensing board a story instead of a file. The move that turns you into the woman who left, instead of the woman who was strong and stayed."
"And if it costs you the job?"
"The job is not the thing."
"Kieran."
"The job is not the thing, Greer. The job has, since the spring of 2018, been what fills the hours between when I get home and when I go to bed.
Six weeks from now the season is over. After that, whatever the franchise decides about my contract, the job will go back to being a job.
What is in this apartment is everything else. "
I do not, for several seconds, answer.
He reaches over with his right hand and puts it flat on the front of me where the tunic falls over the dress. The kick comes once and he keeps his hand there.
"Greer."
"Yes."
"Don't decide tonight."
"Okay."
"Tomorrow you go in. You do the morning skate from the treatment-room side of the corridor. You go about your day."
"Okay."
"Then, in six weeks, we figure out together what the next thing is."
"Okay."
He keeps his hand where it is. The phone on the chair across the room is quiet. After what is probably twenty minutes, he stands and pulls me up with him and walks me, slowly, down the hall to the bedroom.
* * *
He is, this night, careful with me.
He helps me out of the tunic and the leggings.
He gets out of the suit and into a soft cotton tee from the drawer that has, in the last two weeks, become his half of the dresser.
He pulls the duvet down, waits for me to get in, then gets in behind me and slides up against my back the way he has been sliding up against my back every night he has stayed since the first week of January.
The baby kicks, twice.
He says, into the back of my hair: "I'm here."
"I know."
"All night."
I sleep for what is probably four hours, the longest stretch I have had in seven nights, and at three in the morning I wake the way I have been waking lately — slowly, with the steady awareness of my body working overtime, his arm under my ribs and his palm flat against the front of me.
His palm has not moved.
His breathing in the dark is slow and steady.
I lie there for what is probably forty minutes thinking about the call from Pittsburgh and the letter I guess I won’t write tonight and the six weeks between this Wednesday and the end of the season.
A little before four, his palm presses into the front of me where the baby has done the soft turn for the second time in a minute. He does not wake. The pressure of his palm follows the rhythm of the turn the way his hand has, every night for a week, followed it without his being awake to know it.
I wish Indie would just talk to us.
* * *
His alarm goes off at five-thirty.
He gets out of the bed slowly, kisses the back of my shoulder, kisses the top of my head, and goes into the kitchen.
He makes coffee, showers, gets into the spare suit he has been keeping in the closet for two weeks.
He stops in the doorway of the bedroom on his way out with the bag over his shoulder.
"Greer."
"Yes."
"Sleep, and make sure you eat when you wake up."
"Okay."
"I love you."
"I love you, too”
He goes.
I lie in bed with my eyes closed and listen to the door of my apartment close, the door of my building close, the SUV start at the curb and pull away east toward Storrow.
I sleep later than I have in months, actually, the first morning I have slept past six since the night Indie said get out.
When I wake, the apartment is full of the morning March light that comes through the front window of my bedroom at this hour.
The phone on the nightstand has six new messages, none of them urgent.
The radiator in the corner hums. The half-empty glass of water from last night is still on the nightstand.
The pillow next to mine still smells like him.
When I get up, I go to the kettle, put on the cardigan and the soft maternity pants, and eat the half-piece of toast I am going to eat before I do anything else.
I have, today, twenty-three weeks behind me and seventeen weeks ahead.
I have, also, the note Kieran left me on the counter under the sugar dish before he left at six-thirty.
One line, his handwriting, on the back of an envelope from the pile.
Don't decide today. K.
I don't.