by CD Reiss
Chapter 71
JONATHAN
I cut the call because I was frustrated and I couldn’t show it. Watching her come thousands of miles away wasn’t good enough. Her willful obedience drove me to distraction, and her accidental disobedience made my palms sting with the longing for her ass under them. I wanted to mark her with my own hand. Make her come with my body. Fill her with myself, and there I was in my kitchen, with a dick hard enough to crack the granite countertop.
This wasn’t working. A thousand times this wasn’t working.
And why? Because I didn’t want to travel. Because the thought of being too far from Sequoia froze me solid. And a plane? I couldn’t get the image of my heart jumping from my chest out of my mind, and the thought of isolating myself on a plane made that image play and replay until the organ squeaked out a puddle of blood in the leather seat.
But being away from her wasn’t working either. She was getting recognized for her talent, and that meant she was becoming desirable to a certain kind of asshole. She was trustworthy. I didn’t have to assert myself. I didn’t have to lay claim on her. I was an intelligent man with a wife who had laid down her life for him. I knew she’d never betray me. I could feel the fidelity in her heart.
But I did need to assert myself, and the thought of men who wanted to fuck her breathing the same air as her made me boil. I was a child. An unreasonable, hateful brat.
All true. And so what?
I was hungry, and the fridge was empty of anything I wanted. I snapped out my box of pills and the last jar of chimichuri.
If staying close to her and keeping those men off her meant I got on a plane and went where she went and did what she did, then my anxieties about traveling would have to just shut the fuck up. I took a handful of pills and choked them down with warm tap water. Then another, swallowing more frustration than vitamins, more anger than medicine. My body was going to reject this heart just because my mind was rejecting everything I’d held on to for months.
That picture with Omar. If I trusted her, why had it burned me? Why did it feel like a punch in the gut?
Because I’d left her alone. I’d deserted her. She didn’t need a leash. She didn’t need a reminder of her vows or commitments, but I’d assumed she didn’t need or want my presence. I’d accepted that because it was convenient for me. I didn’t have to go anywhere if I made it her fault I wasn’t going. I’d been responsible for that picture and the state of our current discontent.
I ripped open a bag of bread and jammed a piece in the chimichuri. The oil and flakes of parsley dripped off it. The peppers were invisibly green in the mix, and I didn’t give a fuck. I ate it. Cringed. God, that chemical burn. How could I have eaten stuff this hot and not needed a skin graft after? How could this not be damaging tissue? I smelled flesh burning and knew it was in my mind. I curled up the bread and scooped out more, eating it before the burn from the last bite had dissipated.
I didn’t swallow. I kept it in my mouth, nurturing it, letting it hurt me, rejecting whatever weakness this new heart had brought, because they were reactions to something that had happened to someone else. They weren’t me. I had the opportunity and responsibility to reject the changes I didn’t want, and goddamnit, this was excellent chimichuri.
I ate it, leaning over the counter, until the last flake of parsley was gone and my eyes ran with tears. And as if all the new traits I’d gained feared I’d leave, I had the desire to go for a run.
“That, I’m keeping,” I said as I dropped the empty jar into the sink. “I like it.”
I laced up my sneakers and took my phone, because this run had a purpose. I had no more excuses. In the middle of the run, as I was whipping wet sand, I slowed to a walk and called Dr. Solis.
“He’s with a patient,” his assistant said. “Should he call you back?”
She’d presented me with the perfect opportunity to bail. His call back might not go through, or maybe I wouldn’t pick up. If he called back late enough, I wouldn’t be able to get Jacques online for a flight plan.
“I’ll wait.”
“Is this an emergency, Mr. Drazen?”
“No. Yes, but no.”
I faced the darkening ocean, watching the last of the sun dip into the horizon. I heard the birds overhead and had a flash of my heart jumping out onto the wet sand before a wave came in. The weight of the heart was enough to dig it into the sand and create a wake of ripples as it fought, still beating, to stay on the beach against the pressure of the water. I stared at the spot, feeling an emptiness in my chest as two seagulls came down and plucked up my heart, fighting for the fresh meat.
“Fuck you,” I said. “You’re not real.”
“Jon? What’s the trouble?” Dr. Solis said, jarring me.
“I need to travel.”
“So?”
“Cross country.”
“Tell Patty the city. She’ll notify the nearest cardiac unit and text you a number. Is that what this was about?”
I swallowed. No, that wasn’t what it was about. It was about a paralyzing fear that I didn’t recognize because it was so foreign. It was about my wife and how I’d abandoned her because of that fear. It was about regret, and forgiveness, and worthiness.
“Yeah,” I said. “That was it.”
“Good,” he said and hung up.
Damned doctors. Hold a human heart in your hand and the everyday courtesies go out the window. I laughed to myself. I was going to New York.
Chapter 72
MONICA
“Can you explain this one more time?” the old doctor asked with an accent so deeply New Yawk, he sounded like an old Irish cop in a black-and-white movie.
The office was in the eighties and Seventh Avenue, with old cabinets, ancient metal and glass syringes in frames, and photos of a family, then a family’s family. The certificates and diplomas, if observed closely, were from the fifties.
I sat on the leather-surfaced examining table with my hands folded in my lap. “My husband is immunosuppressed—”
“I got that part.” The doctor moved his half-moon glasses to the top of his bald head. “I’ll be happy to help you, but if you’re not actually sick…” He pivoted his hand at the wrist.
“I can’t bring the flu home.”
“Do you have any symptoms?”
“My stomach is a little ishy.”
“Vomiting? Diarrhea?”
“No.”
“So go home.”
I made a face and twisted my shoulders. I don’t know what I was trying to express but discomfort and awkwardness.
“Do you not want to go home? Does he beat you?”
“No!” He did, of course, but that wasn’t what the good doctor meant. “I’m worried. If I get him sick, it’s not like a normal person getting sick. He had a heart transplant.”
The doctor up held his hand. It was surprisingly big, like a wrinkled leather dinner plate. “I’ll tell you what. You’re a nervous wreck. I can see that. And your blood pressure’s through the roof. You gave Bernice a urine sample when you came in?”
“No, I—”
“Do that then. We’ll check your sugar. Check for antibodies. If there’s anything irregular, I’ll let you know. You might be carrying a virus, and you might not. There’s not much more I can do.”
“That’s fine. It’s great. Thank you!”
“You’re very cute, young lady. If I were about sixty years younger, I’d be the older man in your life.”
I laughed, and he helped me off the table with his dinner-plate hands.
I gave my sample and waited.
What would I do if my results came back with some sign that something wasn’t a hundred percent? Like elevated blood sugar? That could mean my body was fighting something, or it could mean I ate too much bread with lunch. Would I stay in New York to keep Jonathan safe? Or would I go home and tell him to stay away from me?
I’d been sick only once since the surgery, at the end of February. A cold had kept me out of the stu
dio, and as frustrating as that was, it also meant I was relegated to another bedroom until Laurelin cleared me to touch my husband. I cursed her. I yelled at her. I told her that I was leaving for Corfu in three days and I was entitled to see Jonathan before then.
And she reminded me that by infecting him with a cold, I’d send him back to Sequoia Hospital faster than if I hit him over the head with a two-by-four.
That shut me up.
I was smiling about it when the good doctor appeared from behind his shellacked wood door.
“Mrs. Faulkner?”
I didn’t correct him. “Yes?”
“Congratulations. We’ve found the source of your ishy stomach.”
Chapter 73
JONATHAN
The night I decided to shed the yoke of love I carried for my ex-wife, I’d felt so unburdened, I laughed. When I let go of my fear of traveling, I didn’t laugh quite as hard, but I walked home quickly, smiling the whole way.
“Mira!” I said when I saw her. “Pack me some things, would you?”
“Sure, sure. How long for?”
“Few days.” If I stayed longer, I could have the hotel launder them or buy new. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting out of this old skin of a house and into my wife’s arms.
“Business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure! A little chilly. Los Angeles in November-ish.”
She smiled widely. “Yes, sir. When are you leaving?”
“Immediately. Go. Jeans and shirts. Two sweaters. Go.” Aling Mira trotted upstairs as I remembered something. “Mira!”
She leaned over the banister. “Sir?”
“Two leather belts. One narrow, one wide.”
“What color?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She nodded and went upstairs.
I got on the phone. “Jacques?”
“Hello, Mister Drazen.”
“I need to go to New York.”
“When?”
“Now.”
I was greeted by an unusual pause.
“What?” I said.
“I’m calculating how long it will take to get there.”
“From where?”
“We just got into Chicago.”
“With the plane?” I started my own calculations.
“For the Prima Culture conference. You—”
“Signed off. Shit.” I stood in the middle of the living room and rubbed my eyes.
When I’d stopped flying, I’d freely loaned the plane to anyone on my staff who needed it for business, and months ago, my executive group had requested it. So the Gulfstream was in Chicago, which was three flying hours away. An hour getting a flight plan approved, half an hour prep. Three hours in the air. Redoing it all once he hit Santa Monica, and the last, most unmovable of obstacles was pilot exhaustion. If he flew into Chicago today and came right back, he wouldn’t be able to legally pilot the plane to New York.
“I can get back, but then I can’t take you,” he said.
When did I decide to start hiring such law-abiding staff? Was I going to have to jog to New York? “Is Petra with you?”
“She’s with the baby.”
I’d hit some nerve; I heard it in the edge in his voice. Petra had given birth to their little boy, Claude, weeks ago. Jacques had been manning the plane on his own, which was completely legal and fine up until then. At that moment, it had become a pain in the ass.
“Do you have a nanny?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“She’s breastfeeding, Mister Drazen. I’m sorry. She can’t pilot to New York and back without feeding him.”
I thought there might be answers that had to do with latex nipples and breast pumps, but I knew nothing about them. Jacques probably would have suggested it if it had been a possibility.
And did I need to go, really? What would happen if I waited a day? Exactly nothing. No lives or livelihoods were at stake. But having decided I wasn’t afraid, that I was ready to go anywhere with her, I couldn’t wait another second.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m being a nightmare of a boss, and the fact that I admit it isn’t going to soften this. I need you to get home, and I need Petra to fly that plane. Get a freelance copilot or a nanny, on me, but I need to go.”
“Mister Drazen. We won’t hire a nanny. That’s not how we do it.”
What I enjoyed about Jacques was that he’d never asked me why I suddenly had to go anywhere. He just flew the damned plane. In return, I couldn’t ask him what kind of stupid fucking rule prevented him from taking care of his son while Petra sat in the cockpit.
I plopped back on the couch, and put my feet on the coffee table, stretching my legs, tensing and releasing.
“How long in the air between here and New York?” I said. “Five hours? Six?”
“Yes. But—”
“I have an idea. Just hear me out.”
Chapter 74
MONICA
I snapped the hotel room door shut and ran to the bathroom, stripping as I went. The mirror in the deluxe suite went from floor to ceiling seamlessly, and it made me look sickly skinny. So when I got in front of it and turned to the side, I felt the same, or worse, because I was knocked up, and to me, I still looked like bag of bones.
“You have to start eating,” I reprimanded myself. “Someone else is counting on you.”
I surprised myself. What was I doing? I didn’t want a baby. I just wanted to make Jonathan as comfortable and happy as possible for however long he had. That was it. Not raise children into orphanhood.
I breathed heavily and tilted one leg. Inside the thigh, the word Jonathan’s became visible. I was marked, written on, branded with his name. I closed my eyes and asked myself what I wanted to pray for.
Was I relieved? Disappointed? What would change? Would I throw caution to the wind and let my sons and daughters go through puberty with a brave and dead father? What was I agreeing to?
I didn’t know. But I knew things were going to change. If we were having a baby, then fuck it, I’d just deal with it.
A smile stretched across my face as if it were someone else’s face. I felt the muscles tense and expand, felt the swelling in my heart one felt when one smiled with joy. I felt as if deciding to deal with it had cracked open part of me, and that smile spilled out.
I opened my eyes. This was awesome. When did it get awesome? Had I been holding on to the desire for his children without realizing it? Had it crept under the covers with me? Had it been in my diet? The air I breathed? When had this glee snuck into my heart?
I pressed my eyes shut against tears. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want my body to have any confusion. The burst of emotion came from a place I didn’t know existed. Some string of code in my DNA, some hormonal rush that was more biological than logical.
I was overjoyed. Thrilled to bursting. I jumped up and, still naked, ran to the tablet. I couldn’t wait to tell him. The metal and plastic were cold in my hand as I woke the device, then I stopped. I wanted to hold him. I wanted his reaction to myself, to own it the way he owned my orgasms. I wanted to feel his strength and his warmth around me when he found out.
Instead of calling him, I made reservations to go home.
When I put the tablet down, I saw the Sharpie on the desk. I picked it up, went to the bathroom, and stood in front of the mirror. My body looked the same to me. I turned every which way and saw no difference. His name between my legs was barely visible when I stood, just a few unreadable hashes of black. I popped the cap off the marker and pressed the tip to the skin below my navel.
“Upside down and backward,” I said. I looked in the mirror. That just confused things.
Right is left and up is down. I drew a J with my right hand and, convinced I was doing it correctly, continued until I’d written Jonathan’s baby across my abdomen.
Then I laughed so hard I lay on the bed and cried with joy.
Chapter 75
MONICA
I couldn’t contain myself.
It was twenty minutes to boarding, and I fidgeted around the terminal, wishing I’d taken the Gulfstream. I picked up the phone. As much as I wanted to call Jonathan… I didn’t. Not yet. I wanted to see his face and hear his breath. I wanted him to hold me so close I could feel that motherfucking heartbeat.
“Mom?”
“Monica, are you all right?”
She was wide awake, and it was four in the morning in Los Angeles. If I’d called at noon, she would have been sleeping. That was Mom. I’d learned to accept it.
To say my mother’s attitude about me had changed after I’d married Jonathan would be a gross understatement. And now she’d be the first person to hear the news from my lips.
“I’m pregnant.” Silence. I didn’t realize how quickly I’d been circumnavigating the terminal until I slowed down. “Mom?”
A woman rolled over my foot with her square bag and gave me a dirty look. Fuck her.
“Monya.”
“Are you all right?”
“Am I all right? Are you asking if I’m all right? My only daughter marries a dying man in the hospital, nurses him back to health, and gets pregnant with his baby, and you ask if I’m all right?” I started to reply, but she cut me off. “How can I not be all right? I’m so happy I cannot even speak. My God, a baby. A baby.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I was glad I’d told her, but I didn’t feel the explosion of joy I’d hoped for. The reveal was kind of a letdown. It needed to be Jonathan, but in front of me.
“Where are you?” she asked. “How far along? Do you have the sickness?”
“I have no idea, but I had kind of a little period a couple of months ago, so the doctor figures two months. And I’m not sick at all. I mean, there was a little flu going around, so—”
“Do you have it? You can’t catch anything.”
Between the worry in her voice and my flight number being called, I lost track of the conversation. “I know, I know. My plane’s boarding. Just don’t say anything to anyone. I haven’t told Jonathan yet.”
