Christopher Beha: Arts & Entertainments: A Novel

“So that’s your help?” Eddie tried not to sound upset, because it had been his own mistake to invest so much in the idea that Blakeman could save him. “You thought I could sell a sex tape to Morgan Bench?”

“If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. I thought I’d give you the option. I wasn’t going to make the choice for you.”

“Well, thanks for the option.”

“You said you were hard up. And Morgan’s actually a reliable guy. He’s sharp as hell. If he told you he can get something for whatever you’ve got, I’m sure it’s on the level. I’m not saying you should do it, just saying that I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.”

“It’s not happening.”

“That’s fine,” Blakeman said. “Let’s get another drink and forget it.”

ON THE WAY HOME, Eddie thought of those videos, which remained on discs in his apartment building’s storage room. Hours and hours of footage, at least some of it interesting by Morgan’s standards, all of it Martha’s doing. She’d bought the digital camera and set it up on a tripod in the corner of their studio on Ludlow Street, and she’d left it running almost all the time. They acted out scenes for auditions or improvised and critiqued each other’s performances. But they also went about their natural lives. Later they would watch themselves and try to refine certain unaffected gestures.

She took it all so seriously. She spoke about acting constantly, though not in the pretentious manner of his college professors. People think of actors as egoists, but Martha had the opposite of ego. She’d given herself up entirely. She had always known she was beautiful — the world constantly reminded her of the fact — but she insisted that beauty was worth less than people thought. Her beautiful mother worked the register for ten hours each day at the local grocery store in her hometown upstate before coming home to drink herself to sleep. Martha was attempting to escape this fate by throwing herself into something enormous, and she expected to be challenged. She seemed half surprised that she’d survived as long as she had. Eddie’s own passage from Queens to St. Albert’s to NYU to his handful of professional roles had been a series of adjacent steps, none quite stretching him to the point of peril. Soon the next step would present itself, he was sure, and he would hop comfortably along. Meanwhile Martha proceeded by great leaps, never assuming safe arrival, always aware that an abyss awaited those who fell short.

He wondered how often she thought now of those days, when he’d been the only certain thing in her life. Did she ever feel bad about walking out the moment she had something else to rely on? She’d never come back to their apartment after the breakup, but he’d put some things in boxes, which her sister eventually came to get. He’d only included items that belonged entirely to Martha, and he hadn’t thought the videos qualified. She’d probably forgotten they existed, or for that matter that he did. More than once Eddie had come close to breaking all the discs, but he could never bring himself to do it. As he arrived home, he decided he would finally throw them out the first chance he got, before he was tempted to make anything of them.

The apartment’s lights were on when he got home, and a half-empty bottle of wine was on the kitchen counter. Eddie found Susan in bed, surrounded by a tangle of sheets and tissues.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Great news.” She looked up now, turned her tear-streaked face squarely to his, and smiled. “Annie’s having another baby.”

Eddie sat down on the bed and put his arm around her without saying anything. He was a bit drunk, and he wasn’t sure he had the energy that the situation required.

“I really am happy for her,” she added. “I’m not a bad friend.”

“Of course you’re not a bad friend.”

Eddie was sure that she’d put up a properly brave face for Annie and expressed the appropriate levels of excitement and support before coming home to cry.

“I just miss my children,” Susan said. “I know that sounds crazy, but it’s like they exist out there somewhere — not just the idea of them — and they’re being kept from us.”

THIS TALK OF LOST children wandering the face of the earth was only the latest variation on a theme that had been playing out for years. They’d both been in their late twenties when they started dating, and though they’d agreed that they wanted children, they hadn’t spoken about it with particular urgency. But after the wedding, Susan had made it clear that she wanted to start trying immediately. Eddie had been slightly relieved that nothing happened right away. He suspected that once they had kids they would look back fondly on the brief time when it had been just the two of them. They’d been married for six months when Annie and her husband took them out to dinner and announced that she was pregnant with their first child.

“What’s wrong with me?” Susan asked in the cab home. “This is the most basic thing in the world. It’s biology. It’s what I was made for. Why can’t I do it?”

“We haven’t been at it that long,” Eddie said.

“I’m calling the doctor tomorrow.”

The doctor had not been concerned. There was nothing unusual about these things taking a few months. If they were in the same position after a year, she would refer them to a specialist. In the meantime, she told Susan to measure out her cycles so they could determine her ovulation days. Since they hadn’t been timing their sex precisely, they really knew nothing.

“We’ve been doing it wrong,” Susan announced.

“I thought we were doing it pretty well,” Eddie answered. When she didn’t smile, he added, “That’s good news, isn’t it? It means we just need to do a little administrative work and we’ll be all set.”

“But if it doesn’t work, we have to wait a year starting now. We’ve wasted the past six months.”

“It didn’t feel like a waste to me.”

“You know what I mean.”

That night after ordering food, Eddie opened a bottle of wine.

“We can each have two glasses,” Susan said. She held a sheet of paper she’d taken from the folder the doctor had given her. “No more binge drinking. It’s not healthy.”

“Splitting a bottle of wine is not binge drinking.”

“And you’re going to quit smoking.”

He’d already promised to do this when they got engaged.

“I did quit.”

“You’ve been sneaking them. You think I can’t smell it? You’re really going to quit. All of this stuff makes a difference.”

When dinner arrived, Susie looked at the bag in disgust.

“No more greasy Chinese food. After tonight we’re eating healthy.”

“We do eat healthy,” Eddie said. “We’re both in good shape. It’s been a long day, and neither of us wants to cook. I don’t think an occasional General Tso’s chicken or a third glass of wine is our problem here.”

“So you admit we have a problem?”

In this way their life had changed. The day after their doctor’s visit, Susan bought a basal body thermometer. She bought ovulation predictor kits. She bought a watch she wore to bed each night that measured the levels of salt in her sweat. She bought a two-hundred-dollar pillow that she placed under her hips after they had sex, when she would lie for half an hour unmoving and silent, with a look of great concentration on her face, as though willing his sperm safely to their destination. The sex itself was always in the missionary position, and it occurred every other day from day ten to day twenty of her cycle. They could have had sex in other manners, at other times. But they didn’t. Neither felt much up to it while these command performances loomed.