by Zoe Whittall
I’m so sorry. Your father knew where I was, but I suppose he didn’t want you to know.
Don’t blame Dad. He was basically insane with grief.
I return to the table. It’s my turn, but it’s increasingly clear that they may not listen. I reach for the ceramic serving spoon and tap it against the crystal water pitcher. I have an announcement. Their heads swivel. I’m going to Turkey. And I wanted you two to reunite before I leave. It’s time. I don’t say I’m dying, even though I had planned to. Instead, I say that Missy is clearly not doing well, and she needs a mother. Let bygones be bygones. At that, my granddaughter pouts. The phone rings. That will be Bryce, I say, excusing myself from the table, and they turn their heads at the mention of his name. Even after everything, Bryce will always be blameless, the most beloved. I pick up the receiver on the kitchen phone. My son’s voice fills my heart. He knows I’m sick, and he has been trying to sell me on treatment. He tells me his travel schedule, the details for his flight to Montreal, where we will meet. Write this down. Are you writing this down? His concern makes my chest feel warm as I scribble notes on the back of a Hydro bill. Only when I tell him that his ex-wife and daughter are in the next room does he stop talking. Oh, he says. Oh, wow. When I return to the table, Carola is crying, and Missy looks even more ill. She stands up suddenly, and then falls over, collapsing onto the floor. Carola gasps, palms the ice from the water pitcher, and rushes to Missy’s side. She draws the wet cubes across Missy’s face until she wakes up. Carola holds her wrist, takes her pulse.
Fuck, Missy says. Fuck fuck fuck.
Are you sick? Carola and I ask at the same time.
Missy’s head is cradled in her mother’s lap. I stand over them, clutching the table’s edge, feeling weak myself. No, I need an abortion.
4.
Missy sits on a stool, taking occasional sips of water. I offer the strawberry rhubarb pie I bought from the bakery down the road. A rectangular block of vanilla ice cream. Carola says, Ice cream is all I wanted when I was pregnant with you. Missy refuses the ice cream but allows me to cut her a slice of pie. Handing her the plate, I say, Perhaps now is not an ideal time, but you will make a wonderful mother. Missy looks at me as though I’ve suggested she fly a pony to the moon.
Don’t be ridiculous, Granny. I’m still a kid, basically.
You’re basically the same age your mother was when you were born.
And look how well that worked out.
Who is the father? I ask.
There is no mother. There is no father. There is a clump of cells.
Exactly, exactly, says Carola. This is Missy’s choice, Ruth. Don’t pressure her.
Missy screws up her face. She doesn’t want her mother’s support. For a brief moment I see Missy contemplating motherhood just to spite her own mother. She crosses her arms. Perhaps she is still a kid.
5.
I am feeling done. And suddenly desperate to see Cy. I tell Missy and Carola that I’m going out for a walk, might stop by a friend’s house. Might, in fact, stay there overnight. Carola grins. Good for you, Ruth! Missy doesn’t follow. She cannot comprehend that I’m a woman, just like her, capable of having a lover. I enjoy her look of puzzlement.
Don’t run the bath and forget about it, I say.
That happened once, Granny. Once. Jeez.
I put on my coat and I look at them. Then I cross to the couch, stepping on the carpet wearing my outdoor shoes because I don’t care anymore. I kiss Missy’s forehead. Good night, my dear. When I was pregnant I had the most vivid dreams. Maybe you will, too.
6.
When I get to Cy’s he is so delighted to see me that he throws his arms up in the air like a happy child. I lead him to the bedroom, and hours later when I fall asleep in his arms, a part of me hopes that I won’t wake up, because that would be a storybook ending.
Izmir, 1997
1.
What do you do when you are not coming back? You make lists. You write letters. Things you want to say. You tell people you love them. You apologize. You get your affairs in order, as they say. See your banker, check your insurance papers. And Cy. Oh, Cy. I know, the way you can know something that’s so true and so difficult at the same time, that I have no other choice. I write him a long love letter. I tell him he was a gift from God at the end of a long, hard road. You renewed my belief in love, in this one life. No one loves like you.
2.
My suitcase is too light to be logical but no one questions it. Gail’s ashes are tucked in there, beside my good pair of shoes, a bathing suit, two cotton dresses, several scarves. The airport in Izmir is smoky and Bryce and I have to slip the officials one hundred American dollars to get visitor’s visas. My grandnephew, Christian, is waiting outside. His car is quite old and dishevelled, but thankfully has air conditioning. I sense he was being punished by being asked to run this errand. The last time I saw him he was a toddler. Out the window, the city of Izmir—the Smyrna of my childhood—sprawls before me. I marvel as we drive and drive, unable to tear my eyes from the red, endless desert on the left and the modern city on the right. And then I glimpse the sea. It’s a cloudless day, and though we could have been at the house in Bornova in half an hour, Christian is taking us to his mother’s summer house near Cesme, a one-hour drive away.
3.
When we arrive in the pastoral seaside town of my childhood, I find it has grown gaudy, its solitary charm gone, replaced by chaotic, slapdash housing, a luxury hotel, surf shops, and crowds. All the people are unnerving. The noise of Turkey is overwhelming, but it is an answer of sorts. I’d thought of returning for so many years. The last time I went home was before my divorce, when Bryce was still a teenager, in the 1960s. And now here I am. The village had always been barely a village at all, just a sparsely populated beach escape. Now, it is bustling, with paved roads clogged with cars, plus the usual donkeys, packs of roving dogs, and families walking about. But behind the white gate of our small family compound, everything is familiar, as if it has been frozen in time. An outdoor kitchen with a roof attached to a master bedroom, a living area outside with two enclosed rooms on the other side, each big enough for a bed, a dresser, and ensuite bathroom. Bryce and I are given these guest bedrooms. We unpack and go out to the courtyard for iced tea and platters of fruit, cheese, and olives. I forgot the way food tastes here. There’s never a tremendous amount of variety but everything is perfect for the heat. For the first hour it is peaceful, and then the new nightclub next door begins to play loud music and doesn’t stop until after midnight.
4.
I did not anticipate that coming to Turkey would bring a new wave of grief for my sister. Aren’t I here to mourn my own departure? She has been dead for almost ten years, but I still see her everywhere as I walk the narrow streets to the village, test my toes in the sand at the water’s edge, order a coffee from the vendor by the beach. I think of things to say to her all the time, memories from when we were kids I want to share. While I’ve missed Turkey for all these years, for Gail, it was the opposite. Gail never wanted to come back here. Good riddance, she would say. It’s a backward country and we’re lucky we escaped—in every sense of the word. Gail loved Canada. In the 1960s, she became obsessed with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and with the Kennedys. Her house was a chaotic mess of art supplies, afghans, and tchotchkes, all things our parents would have loathed. She only visited Turkey with me once, and had to be dragged. Frank and I had brought Bryce back every five years or so, and Gail refused, except for that one time. I thought once about moving home to Turkey, but I was comfortable in Canada, especially with Gail living right down the street. Gail did not indulge in nostalgia. For a while I was made up almost entirely of nostalgia. But still, I don’t feel like she minds—it feels like the right thing—when Bryce and I drive to Bornova and we bury her ashes in the cemetery next to my parents.
5.
Bringing Bryce back to Turkey is like bringing a celebrity to town. The American! Of course, he brought
a suitcase full of treats. Dinners late on the patio with the cousins, he is the life of the party, cracking them up with his stories. Finally, I get him to myself. We drive to the house in Bornova and sit in the garden. We only have a short time because now that the family fabric business has shuttered, they’ve begun to rent out the yard for the weddings of Turkish celebrities. Bryce’s beard has grown silver, but I still see the little boy he once was, the one who was born in this very house. I can see his boyishness in the shape of his face, the mischievous glint in his eyes. The love I feel for him is almost unendurable. But I am tired. It is difficult to walk up a flight of stairs. My brain is cloudy—well, more so than usual. We have two days left in Turkey. I say to Bryce, You used to love playing hide-and-seek around here, do you remember? He looks at me funny, then says, I do, Mom. Sure, I do. My son always wants to talk about my illness, but I want to talk about the past. I tell him, You were my shining star, you know that. He looks at me again, as if I might be losing it, and says, Yes, Mom, I know that, too. I see that this nostalgia is mine alone. Bryce has years to think back on these memories, to remember. I have less time. Bryce, I say, you know Melissa is not in a good place. You need to pay more attention when I’m gone. Don’t let her drift away from you. He denies this, saying she’s doing great, her band is nearly famous, she makes more money than he does! So I simply make him promise that he’ll check in more, make sure his daughter knows that he is there for her. And if he doesn’t hear from her for a while, that he will follow up. And he promises. I will, Mom. Then he turns his gaze to the gardens before us. I follow my son’s eyes. Inhale the garden air deeply into my lungs. My weak lungs. It’s such a trip to be back here. Do you ever think about who we would have become if we’d stayed here? he asks. All the time, I say.
6.
On the day before Bryce and I are to leave, we are going sailing. I had asked for this, asked my cousins if they would take us out. We drop the anchor in the bay. It is beautifully sunny. Cloudless blue. We eat a little lunch of melon, white cheese, and fresh bread, pass around some wine. I drink two glasses. We spread our towels on the bow and watch the kids jump into the water. I watch Bryce and the other adults jump off the boat, joining the kids. I am still astonished that my own child is a middle-aged man, with a soft paunch, wiry hairs on his legs turning grey. He splashes about. He really knows how to connect with children. So why is it so hard with his own daughter? Because she is a woman now? They all swan away from the boat, leaving me alone on the deck. When they come back, I will be gone. I have had a wonderful life. I say a prayer of thanks to God, and I ask Him for forgiveness. And to watch over my loved ones in my absence. I slip into the water and begin to swim away from the boat. As I tire, the swirls that once tried to envelop my young body now embrace me. I offer myself back. I am not afraid.
Book Two
2013
[A] friend wrote to ask all the desperate questions I used to ask before I became a mother. How old were you? How long were you married? How long did it take? I wrote back, one of the great solaces of my life is that I no longer need to wonder whether I’ll have children.
—Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary
I’m just another lady without a baby
—Jenny Lewis, “Just One of the Guys”
Chapter 1
missy
i saw them through the cottage’s bay window. It was dusk, so the light was diffuse and I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first. I could hear the ocean below, down the steep and winding stone path on the other side of the pool. I’d gotten out of the car and stretched toward the failing sun, while Penelope ran around sniffing the dirt before rolling over onto her back and kicking her legs in the spasmodic frenzy of the recently unbound. I kicked at the gumnuts under the eucalyptus tree. Everything smelled so rich when I was away from the city. I took three slow deep breaths, then got a mouldy box out of the trunk, filled with Granny’s china my dad had shipped me from Canada in a recent cleaning frenzy. I was preparing to get the key from under the oddly menacing bunny sculpture we bought as a joke and that was now just one of the many inside jokes that make up a marriage. But I saw that the door was already ajar. Had we been robbed? Then I noticed an unfamiliar car at the far side of the house.
I was surprised Navid could get hard again. That was my first thought, as though I were watching my husband complete a simple athletic task I’d assumed he’d aged out of. A floral saucer slipped through a rip in the damp cardboard and smashed on one of the granite stones of the walkway. I kept watching. The box on the ground, arms crossed around a squirming Penelope, as though it were a show I’d paid admission to. I couldn’t speak. Could hear only the steady beat of my heart breaking in my own ears. Then a soft rage. I don’t know why I waited. It wasn’t turning me on. Her hands were up against the wall above the couch, his hands curled around her wrists. I was concerned she might knock down the framed gold record that was my most prized possession. She was pretty quiet for such a small girl getting railed like that. The last time Navid had fucked me he was half hard, and he got tired. It was as though we were both determined to finish a project neither cared about anymore, and I remember thinking I was trying to work a battered baby bird in my palms, revive it with my efforts.
But watching him fuck her, I remembered how he used to have to own me. He’d been breaking off his first marriage at the time. He made it sound as if it was already over, but later I learned she didn’t feel that way. Of course this was how it would end with us. If you begin as the beloved, passionate affair, you’ll end as the one who is forsaken. Why should I be surprised that it would end in such a tawdry and ultimately banal way?
I couldn’t turn away. It wasn’t a half-bad show, for amateur porn. She had no body hair, two big leg tattoos, like all young chicks have now.
A few days earlier, Navid had tapped me on the shoulder while I was mixing a song in the studio. Light was drifting in through a gap in the curtains, dust floating around in the beams. I pulled off my headphones. I hoped he was going to suggest dinner, or a walk, something that might involve us actually hanging out. Instead he told me he was going to attend a last-minute conference over the weekend. Even though I’d been craving connection, I was relieved to spend some time alone. It was our wedding anniversary the following week and I was dreading it. Would we sit through a dull dinner, wishing to be elsewhere? Every year I made him a gift, usually something that took months to complete. This year I was scrambling. The year had been difficult. A memento wouldn’t cut it. I didn’t mention that I was planning to come up to the cottage in Half Moon Bay. I needed the solitude and space, so I could really think, so I could finally make a fucking decision.
Well, here was the decision, made for me.
That morning I had gone to the thirty-second floor of a high-rise in downtown San Francisco to have my blood drawn by a perky fertility doctor. Because I’m a fainter, she told me to lie down on a leather chaise longue. I turned away from the needle and stared out at the cityscape. “This test is going to give us a snapshot of your ovarian reserve,” she said. “Every day after thirty-five, your fertility declines.”
“My life isn’t really set up well for kids right now,” I admitted, watching the tiny ant-like cars driving up and down Potrero, “but I’m afraid it might be too late.”
“No one ever really feels like they’re ready!” she said, pressing a spot of gauze to my arm and handing me a Band-Aid. I blanched at the carefully labelled tubes of blood on the steel tray. How would I give birth, if I hate imagining what’s under my skin? I stood up slowly and followed her back to her desk.
She sipped from a rainbow mug that read BE STILL. Her hair was very shiny, a deep walnut brown, and I squinted at her until she appeared to slip into the sun’s glaring whiteness outside the window. She set up an ultrasound appointment so they could take a closer look at my ovaries.
“You know, parenting is hard, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” she said. People always said th
at. I remembered doctors telling me similar things when I was young and definitely never wanted kids. But things were different now. For one, I thought about the future now. And I was less easily entertained. I’d done years of therapy. I was less angry. I’d already achieved the kind of success in my career that I wanted, so having a kid wouldn’t keep me from any goals.
“Thank you,” I said, and walked back into the waiting room, where anxious people waited for early-morning ultrasounds.
Maybe I could do this. I could join them. I’d assumed that she was going to tell me I was too old. But I wouldn’t know until we got the test results. Part of me was thrilled about the possibility that I could still conceive, while another part was hoping my body would make the decision for me. If my egg count turned out to be too low, I could walk into the midlife I’d always planned without kids. I could see that child-free future clearly, and it looked like happiness and freedom, songwriting and movie scores, friendships, travel, independence. I liked my life the way it was, mostly, didn’t I? Lately, I was never sure how to answer that question.
I’d checked my phone, looking for a text from Navid, wishing he had remembered about the appointment, had checked in to ask how I was. No message. I figured he was in conference mode, phone turned off in his pocket. But it would have taken so little to remember and send a short hope your appointment goes well! text. He used to be so considerate, more present than anyone I’d ever been with. The slow unravelling of those daily thoughtful habits, the ease with which we took each other for granted, it was both mundane and crushing.
