“Apparently not.”
He looks down, stirs the ice in his drink with his fingers. He has such long fingers. I bet this baby has long fingers, too. Travis does. Looking up, David says, “Forgive me. But … my sperm, right?”
I sit for a long moment, then say, “No, I don’t believe I do forgive you.” I stand up, reach for my coat.
He takes my arm. “Please. Don’t make this more melodramatic than it already is. We’ll take care of it, that’s all.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I say. And have the curious sensation, pushing the door open to leave, that two people are doing it.
. . .
“Oh, God,” Rita keeps saying, until I finally say, “Will you stop? Will you stop saying ‘Oh, God’?”
“Well, Sam. This is so unbelievable! I mean, it’s like those teenagers who live in trailers and go to the bathroom one day and deliver. And their whole family’s standing around with their mouths open saying, Goooolllllleee!”
“Thank you for your incredible sensitivity.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I know this is … Well, I guess this accounts for some of the craziness you’ve been feeling.”
“Who knows? It seems like divorce can do a pretty good job of that all by itself.”
“True. Oh, poor Sam. The double whammy. When your hormones get back to normal, you’ll probably feel lobotomized. So, when are you going to have it done?”
“What?”
“The abortion.”
“I called.”
“And?”
“And it’s all set. Next week. But, Rita—”
“Don’t even say it.”
“I have to say it. They asked me these questions over the phone and I just started bawling. ‘Any other pregnancies?’ Yeah, I’ve had ‘another pregnancy.’ It turned into Travis.”
“You can’t have it.”
“Why not?”
Silence.
“I’m raising one on my own. Why not two?”
“Oh, man. Do you need me to go with you? I will. I’ll come back out there, we’ll go together. When’s the appointment?”
“You don’t need to come. Thanks, but it’s okay.”
“Who will go with you?”
“They said it’s preferable to bring someone, but you don’t have to. They’ll assign you someone.”
“Great. Rent-a-friend.”
“But I’m not sure. I want to think about this.”
“Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
“You know, Rita, you’re acting like a fucking man. You’re not listening, you’re just telling me what to do. I’m not sure it’s the right thing!”
“Well, fine. But you’d better decide fast.”
“I know that!”
“Okay. Okay. Look. You know I’ll support you in whatever you decide. But I really don’t think now is the time. I mean, come on, do you?”
I don’t answer. When Travis was a newborn, I would go in to nurse him at night and I would raise his T-shirt to watch him breathe. His stomach moved up and down so rapidly it pained me. I would look at his soft spots, afraid of them, see the pulsations from his beating heart. After a few weeks, he would interrupt himself while he was nursing to look up at me and smile, milk running down his chin. And I would tighten my hold on him, renew my vow that nothing would ever, ever hurt him. This is what I want to tell Rita. But I can’t. King is right—the words would only hint at all I mean to say.
“What’s David say?” Rita asks.
“What does David say? Yank it out.”
“Well, that’s a little crude.”
“When I told him, I felt so … We didn’t talk much. I wish I hadn’t told him.”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know.”
Not true. I know. I told him because I wanted his face to soften and for him to say, “Oh, Sam. That’s wonderful. Listen, we’ll work it out. I’m not happy away from you and Travis, this was wrong. Let me move back in.” And then I would not worry about retirement planning, David could do that. And I would not think that I would grow old alone and demented in some filthy apartment with a chair by the window.
“I’ll let you know,” I tell Rita. “I’ll tell you when I know.”
In the dream, I am standing by a large tree, the bark with a deeply etched pattern like dried earth. Out of one of the cracks a red tulip is growing. A hand is reaching toward it, ready to pick it. “Oh no, don’t,” I say. “Don’t pick it. It’s new life. It’s a miracle.” I awaken, blink in the darkness, close my eyes again.
31
Two days before the appointment, I take a day off from work, tell Travis as he is eating breakfast that I’ll be cleaning out his closet today.
“No!” he says, his mouth full of scrambled eggs.
“I have to! You can’t shut the door anymore!”
“I’ll do it,” he says. “You’ll throw everything out!”
“First of all,” I say, “you won’t do it. Secondly, I will not throw everything out.”
“Yeah, just the good stuff.”
“If you would keep your closet clean, then I wouldn’t have to clean it for you. I don’t enjoy cleaning it any more than you do. I’ve told you a hundred times—”
“Oh, don’t give me one of your lectures.”
“Travis, don’t you take that tone of voice with me. I swear to God. Do not speak to me like that again or I’ll slap your face. I have never hit you yet, but I promise you I am entirely capable of it.”
His eyes widen. “Boy. You’re crabby.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I know!”
“Go to school.”
He stands. “I am!”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
As I watch Travis go out the door, Lavender comes up the basement steps and into the kitchen. “Hi,” she says, her voice croaky with sleep.
“Hi.”
I watch her grab a spoon, then head for the refrigerator and take out a carton of plain yogurt. She sits at the table and pulls off the lid, smells it. “I really hate this stuff.”
“Well, why eat it, then?” I ask tiredly.
“ ’Cause everything else is, like, poisonous,” she says. “Everything else will give you cancer. The planet is so totally wrecked.” She swallows a mouthful of yogurt, shudders.
“Lavender?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you tell Travis that if he eats snow he could die?”
“It’s true!”
“And that in a few years we’ll all have to wear gas masks?”
She shrugs.
“You know,” I say. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t think things are working out too well with you living here.”
She looks up, sighs deeply. “You’re, like, kicking me out, right?”
“Not ‘like.’ ”
“I knew it.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“So … end of the month, right?”
“Right.”
Lavender nods. “This always happens.”
“Frankly, I’m not surprised.” I want to ask Lavender who her references were. Probably relatives who wanted to make sure she didn’t end up with them. But what’s the difference?
I go upstairs to Travis’s bedroom, sit at his desk, look around his room. He has made his bed, more or less. I reach over to tuck in one edge of the sheet, pull on the quilt to straighten it, find a sock, hold it in my hand. I look out his window, remember when his chin barely came to the ledge, remember him later sitting on my lap while I helped him undress for bed, looking out that same window at the setting sun and saying, with wonder, “The sky’s coming down.” When I came downstairs, smiling, I told David what Travis had said. From behind his newspaper, David said, “Huh. He’s mixed up.”
I open Travis’s closet door, stare dejectedly at the mess. It’s sort of amazing, the creativity of it. A veritable sculpture of clothes, games, old schoolwork, shoes, hangers, loose felt-tipped markers. Back in
the corner is a stack of old children’s books, the ones he’d liked best. I pull one off the top of the pile. Pumpernickel Tickle and Mean Green Cheese. Ah, yes. I open the book, turn to the picture of an elephant and a boy who are playing cards on the boy’s bed. Neither Travis nor I had found anything about that to be unusual. Of course a boy and an elephant are playing cards. What happens next? I close the book, put it back in the closet, shut the door, and go to the phone. “This is Sam Morrow,” I say. “I’d like to cancel an appointment.”
I am up late, watching E.T. Couldn’t sleep. Suddenly, between my legs, a warm wetness. I go into the bathroom, pull down my pajama bottoms. A fair amount of blood. I go into the kitchen, call the hospital emergency room, speak in a low voice to the nurse on duty. How old am I, he wants to know. Oh. Well, then. I can come in if I want to. Or I can just wait it out. It will undoubtedly all pass without complication. If cramping gets bad, if I develop a fever, if the bleeding doesn’t stop … Yes, I understand, I say.
I am in my forties. I already have a child. Therefore there is no tragedy here.
I feel more blood coming and go into the bathroom, sit on the toilet and wait. I feel it pass. I stand, and, holding a towel to myself, try to see it in the bloody water. Then I pull up my bottoms and go to the kitchen for a tablespoon. I want to bury it in my yard. I want it always near. But it won’t stay on the spoon and I’m afraid to touch it with my hands. I flush the toilet, and, quietly weeping, put on a sanitary pad. It’s gone. Everything is gone. I can’t hold anything. Back in bed, I cup my hands over my uterus and begin weeping so loudly I awaken Travis. He opens my door, sticks his head in. “Mom?”
I stop crying. “Yes?”
“Are you crying?”
What to say? What not to say? “Yes, I am.”
“Oh.” He scratches one foot with the other. “Want me to come in there with you?”
I smile, feel tears slide into the corners of my mouth.
“It’s okay, honey. Sometimes you just need to cry, right?”
“I guess.”
“It’s just … you know, I was watching a sad movie.”
“What one?”
“E.T.”
“Oh. The part where he goes away?”
“Yeah. Did you think that was sad, too?”
“Yeah. I guess. Not that sad.”
“Right. Well, I’m sorry I woke you up. Let’s just go back to sleep, okay? And tomorrow let’s have something special for breakfast.”
“What?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Pancakes with blueberries? And bacon?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” He starts down the hall, then comes back into my room. “Mom?”
“Yeah.”
“I hope you feel better.”
“Thank you. I’ll be fine.”
He hesitates, then comes over to kiss my cheek. Which makes my throat hurt so much I make two fists in order not to cry out.
32
“Would you like to try a sample of our new cheese?” I ask.
The older woman stops her grocery cart, squints at me. “What is it?”
“Well, it’s a new kind of Swiss cheese. Much lower in fat than the others.”
“Is it any good?”
“Would you like to taste it?”
She frowns. “I don’t think so.”
I put the foil tray back down on my card table. I’m wearing an apron with a cow on it. I would rather build a header. But this is the only job that was available for me today.
“Would you like to try a sample of our new cheese?” I ask a middle-aged man.
“Does it come with a burger?” he asks.
“No, it’s just cheese.”
“That was a joke,” the man says. “You don’t have a very good sense of humor, do you?”
I smile. “Guess not.”
. . .
Late that night, before going to sleep, I call King. “I handed out cheese samples today,” I say. “What did you do?”
“Painted bedrooms in a new house. Mission white, mission white, and mission white.”
“I’m tired of working.”
“Good. Let’s take a day off tomorrow and go to a movie.”
“Two movies.”
“Okay.”
I hang up the phone and hear the sound of voices, whispering. I get out of bed, come out into the hall. It’s Edward and Travis, huddled together downstairs at the front door. “What are you guys doing?” I call down. “It’s midnight!”
“Shhhh!” Edward motions frantically for me to come down.
“What is it?” I say, and then, shhhhh!ed again, wait until I am at his side to whisper, “What is it?”
“I think it’s … an intruder,” Edward says, looking meaningfully at Travis. Ah. What he means is, It’s a murderer. Edward is clutching his bathrobe at his neck with one hand, wielding his squash racket in the other.
I pull Travis toward me. “You go upstairs. Right now.” Tomorrow I’m getting a dog.
“I’m not going upstairs!” Travis says. “He might come up there!”
He might. He might be up there now. He might have watched me go down the stairs!
“When did you last hear him?” I ask Edward.
“He’s outside. I think he’s in the bushes.”
“Well, what should we do?” I ask. “Should I call the cops?”
“That’ll just make him mad,” Edward says. And then, “Oh, this is ridiculous! We need a man in the house!”
“Mom,” Travis says.
“What?” I look at his upturned face and immediately calm down.
“Come with me,” I say. “It’s all right. Let’s go call the police. They’ll be right over.” I dial 911, then use my best speaking voice, as I am being recorded.
It takes three and a half minutes for the police to arrive. We watch from the window as two overweight men get out of the squad car. The blue flashing lights are a comfort, for once.
“They should be careful!” Edward says. “What are they doing, just getting out like that!”
“They have guns,” Travis whispers. “Probably thirty-eights. Or maybe Magnums.”
“What are you talking about!” I say. “What are you talking about guns! That’s it, you don’t play with Howard Niehauser anymore!”
“Do you mind?” Edward says. “Do you think this is the time and the place? Why don’t you wait to see if we live? Then you can kill him.”
“Shhh!” I say. I hear it now, too, the rustling of someone in the bushes. And then the police see him, and put their hands, both of them, to their guns at exactly the same time, in the same way. A little police choreography. A little ballet. I start to laugh.
Edward stares at me, bug-eyed.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I always laugh when I’m nervous. I hate this about myself.
“Come out of there with your hands up,” I hear one of the cops say, and I thrill to the familiarity of the phrase, which, up to now, I’ve only heard in movies, on TV. A slight figure disentangles itself from the bushes. It is Lavender Blue, who, as she explains hysterically to the policemen, just forgot something, that’s all. A statue of Saint Jude she had buried out front when she first moved in. It was just for luck, she tells them as she slides into the car, the muddy patron saint clutched in her hand.
I open the door. “Excuse me!”
One cop slams the car door after Lavender, then heads up the walk toward me. The other cop gets in the front seat of the car and turns around to look at her, a weary sorrow in his face.
“It’s all right,” I tell the cop who is standing on my front porch. “She used to live here. She just moved out.”
“You don’t want to file a report?”
“No.”
“She always visit this late?” the cop asks.
“She has trouble sleeping.”
The cop tongues off a tooth, makes a muted smacking sound. “Okay, then. Take care.”
I close the door, turn
to see Edward stashing his racket back in the front hall closet. He combs his hair back with his fingers, tosses his head, tightens his robe belt. “Well,” he says. “Good night.”
“I’m not tired,” Travis says, exhausted-looking.
33
I’ve gotten too dressed up. It’s only a lunch. But there was something in his voice.
I see David come in the door, and wave at him. He comes over to the table, smiles. Sits. Smiles again.
The waiter comes over and I order herbal tea. “The same,” David says. “You like tea?” I ask. “You never used to.”
He shrugs. “It’s so cold out. Seems like a good idea.”
“It is cold.”
“Yes. Sam …” A long silence.
I wait. He has circles under his eyes. He’s lost a little weight. The waiter brings our tea, and we both order sandwiches. And then David says, “I don’t know exactly how to say this. But I’ve been thinking. Sam, I made a big mistake. I’m coming home.”
I sit, frozen.
“Do you think we should tell Travis together?”
“Well, David, I—”
“You don’t need to answer right away. We can think about the best way to do it. But I’m just so relieved.”
“What about your girlfriend?”
“Oh, that was … She was only—”
“Did she leave you?”
He looks into my eyes. “No. It was my decision.”
He’s telling the truth.
I try to imagine telling Travis, think of how happy he will be to learn that his dad is coming back. I can have my old life again.
“I’ve missed you, Sam. I’ve come to understand so much about myself lately, about the way we were together, about what we had that I just …” He stares into his teacup, shakes his head.
“What do you miss, David?”
He looks up, laughs. “Oh, come on, Sam, I think you must know that. Our routines, Travis, I just—”
I swallow, touch his arm. “About me, David. What do you miss about me?”
“Well.” He smiles, leans forward. “I miss … everything. The way you’re always there for me. The way you never question me or give me a hard time. Even the meals you make, you—”
“David?” How about this? The way your shoes are always untied. The way you cry over greeting cards. The way you try to hide your cowlick. The freckle at the side of your right breast.