Read Things Unsaid: A Novel for Free Online Page A

that showcased the latest models of luxury cars.
    The house was built in 1927—the same year Dr. Whitman was born, as he liked to boast. A good year for coming into the world. An omen for their future happiness. He hoped so, anyway. He felt mostly settled down by then. Except for the mountain of bills and the huge mortgage—but he trusted that they would be paid off in time. Their future was their own to construct. And yet.
    Aida had volunteered to help him move into his new office. Shebought magazines, placed a few ashtrays on side tables, and put up a bulletin board with health tips sent to him by the American Medical Association. With his shiny new x-ray machine, his antique black-walnut desk that telegraphed his power and status, and his black-leather examining table, complete with the highest-quality stainless steel stirrups, he felt complete. Then, she told him.
    “Oh, sweetheart. You know, I haven’t been feeling myself lately. And now my period’s late.”
    Elated, Bob went in to hug her.
    Dodging him, blocking him with her right shoulder like a defensive back, Aida said, “It’s too early to start a family. Way too early. And we haven’t even settled in yet, Barbie.”
    Bob hated her adoption of his family nickname, especially when she said it in that false, saccharine voice of hers. “You have your practice to think about. It’s not the right time.”
    Of course, his wife had been right, he now admitted reluctantly. Neither of them had talked about starting a family, and they needed to save more money. But her words had felt like a slap. They could have managed, if they both had wanted to.
    But in that moment, he could see in his wife’s face just how unfit she would be as a mother. She bit her arm hard. Bright red teeth marks flared up on her forearm, alarming him.
    “An abortion’s the
only
option,” Aida said. “A baby now would ruin any chance for happiness.”
    And so he had given her a dressing gown, had her slip her feet in the stirrups—she was the first patient to christen them—and performed the procedure.
    Aida rested as he moved brand-new equipment into his office. Lots of new vinyl furniture—tough, so kids couldn’t ruin it. But their own kids wouldn’t come until later.

    Sometimes, over the years, Bob had felt like a shadow dad, a ghost of a dad, an outlier in his own home. Like his own father had been. Hardly ever saw them, and now his middle-aged son and daughters had movedon with their own lives and families. Raising kids had not been heart healthy. No one ever says that.
    What he’d really wanted was to be a writer, an author of a how-to book:
Beat the Wife and Save the Marriage
. He kept this to himself, or at least the title. Never knew when someone would steal his idea before he found the time to write. But he never started the first paragraph. Too tired and too angry, he guessed. Just never found the right moment to begin. He had thought there would be time after he had more financial security. There never was enough time. There never was enough money either. What had happened to their marriage, anyway?
    All those decrepit virgins he had forced himself to visit. For over thirty years he had driven to the convent. The promised Sunday-morning house call. Our Lady of Sorrows had once been the O’Neill family estate. Devout Catholics with too much money, the O’Neills were also founders of one of the four major tire companies. They donated their Gothic stone mansion for a girls’ school focusing on etiquette and good posture—rather ironic for the sixties. The convent halls, though imposing and haunting, were somehow pinched, starved in decor with their dusty-heavy curtains—probably relics from the O’Neills’s days there—and the rows of statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Only the statue of the Infant of Prague had fabric; glistening and regal, the mantle, which baby Jesus wore upon his shoulders, almost matched the draperies.
    Being there was like viewing the