Open by Lisa Moore Page A

them he knew she wasn’t in love.
    He dragged out the chair beside her and the metal legs screeched like a bird caught in an engine. Before he sat down she said she was pregnant and she wouldn’t consider abortion. He said, Are you sure? By which he meant, Are you sure I’m the father. She knew what he meant and she was hurt by thequestion, and that surprised him more than anything. Their sexual encounters had a different meaning for her. Perhaps every sexual encounter he’d ever had had meant something different to the girl. She had summoned him through a blizzard. He had implicated himself by showing up. He was there.
    The child, a little girl, was three by the time Lyle met Anna. She stayed with Lyle for half the week until she was seven, and then he and Rachel agreed it was easier for everyone if she lived in one place. He paid child support, and drove her to hockey and ballet. She came for supper when she felt like it.
    One day last March I went up to Lyle’s study on the third floor. I pushed Sic’um out of the armchair near the window. It had occurred to me that we might, after twelve years together, split up over this. I wondered what would happen to our house, the summer house in Conception Bay, the car. How would Alex feel. I was still wearing my winter coat. I held the bag from the pharmacy.
    This is it, I said. I rattled the bag. Lyle swivelled in his chair to face me. He pressed his hands down the length of his thighs. I had wanted a second child more than anything in the world and Lyle hadn’t. I had wanted one with all my might. Alex was eleven.
    Go to it, he had said. While I was in the bathroom reading the instructions I could hear him typing.
    We had been vacationing in France. I was in the shower and I’d felt a sharp pinch and knew. It was like anything else without rhythm or beat. No way to be sure of it; I was sure. Myforehead tingled, I broke a light sweat. All the objects in the world brightened in a single synchronic pulse. If Lyle wanted to leave, he could leave. If there was a fight, I would hardly be able to pay attention. Nobody feels conception taking place; I felt it.
    The wheels on Lyle’s office chair squeaked over my head. The test sat on the windowsill. The bathroom linoleum was cold underfoot and there was a flattened squiggle of blue toothpaste in the sink with some of Alex’s hair stuck in it, wavering under a thread of water from the leaking tap. On the floor above, Lyle was rolling toward the bookshelf. Dragging himself with the heels of his shoes. Then he kicked himself back to the computer and began typing again. Our luggage was still in the living room, though we’d been back a week. I wanted it put away. Beside the pregnancy test, an enamel soap dish, a brilliant white bar of soap smeared with two bleating red petals from the geranium. The faded pink cross on the plastic wand turned redder.
    I called up the stairs, It’s positive.
    Lyle rings the doorbell and we wait. Prissy Ivany swings the door wide open and grins at us. She’s wearing a long, clingy black dress with a greenish sheen and her hair is big and orange.
    Your hair is beautiful, Prissy, I say. Charles Ivany comes up behind his wife.
    She once hid some forks in there, Charles says.
    That’s true, says Prissy, a whole place setting.
    Where’s Alex, asks Charles.
    A sleepover, I say.
    Charles is smoking with an emerald cigarette holder and he’s wearing a tuxedo jacket with satin lapels and a red bow tie. He has a miniature set of antlers on his bald head.
    So glad you could make it, he says. Let me take your coats.
    Let’s get that baby settled away, says Prissy. Charles claps his hands once.
    What will you have to drink? I’ve got a very good sherry.
    I’ll try the sherry, Lyle says. He’s beaming happiness.
    Good man, says Charles.
    Prissy brings me to a bedroom upstairs and helps me with the folding playpen. She switches on a baby monitor and holds it to her ear. Then she gives it a shake.
    Guess