Fire & Water

by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder

  Jake led us all up the grand staircase, showing each room. The master bedroom had rich ebony wood floors; the bed was a huge marshmallow of pillows and down comforters.

  We followed Jake like mute zombies, finally ending up in a sunny nursery painted in pale apple green, the entire ceiling filled with delicate, suspended mobiles fashioned of origami leaves hung by filaments so fine that the leaves appeared to float. The mobiles swayed gently as our bodies stirred the air and cast dancing shadows over the crib.

  “It’s beautiful, Jake. Amazing, really. I would never have thought you could rent this kind of place for a weekend.”

  “I didn’t rent it for a weekend.”

  “For how long?” I began to panic. The thought of how many thousands of dollars such a place would rent for made me feel weak.

  Jake pulled a small box from his tuxedo pocket. “Here. My wedding gift.”

  Inside the box, on a bed of tiny white pebbles, rested a single key.

  Dad and Alice wore faces with stunned expressions. “But Jake, the rent on this place has got to be outrageous. I don’t—”

  “I bought it. It’s my gift to you and to our baby.”

  I buckled into the willow-wood rocker poised in the corner of the nursery. Jake kneeled beside me. “That’s where I want to see you,” he said. “I want you and our baby to have this home.”

  “But this is too much. I’ll have to take some time off. My residency doesn’t pay a lot and I’ve got student loans and—”

  “It’s only money. Burt manages all of that. We’ll pay off your loans. Don’t worry so much, Kat. Do you like the house?”

  I looked over at Alice and then at my dad. I imagined the sound of our baby’s laughter coming from the nursery. Jake would use the atrium as a studio. I could see it all. But the whole house was so grand. The bar and the flat upstairs had always felt like plenty to me.

  “I’ll work right here at home while the baby is little. I’ll be Mr. Mom. I can see it all. All of it, right here. Oh Kat, it’ll be perfect.”

  * * *

  The sorrel dome and curved colonnades of the Palace of Fine Arts admired themselves in the reflection of the lagoon. A breeze swayed the graceful limbs of the willows and carried flower-scented air to greet us as we stepped out of the limousine. The springtime sky had shed all her gray garments and wore celebratory blue. Vivaldi’s timeless melodies lauding the season sung from the strings of the violins, cellos, and violas poised between the Corinthian columns of the Roman rotunda. Pink cherry blossom petals carpeted the walkway.

  Open to the public, the early spring day had invited tourists to the grassy hills beside the lagoon. They watched our arrival from a polite distance. Dad would walk me down the aisle, and Burt and Alice, our best man and matron of honor, would walk together. Our small gathering of friends waited for us inside.

  We stepped from the car onto the grassy bank. Burt was there to greet us, always the consummate events arranger. “Here,” he said grinning, holding out a package wrapped in brown paper.

  Inside was a black-and-white framed photograph of Jake and me, lying on the soft grass of Japan’s countryside. Our bodies were entwined and Jake’s hand rested on my belly. No world existed outside our gaze for each other and the baby we knew I held. Titled “The Nest,” the picture bore Burt’s flourished signature. I couldn’t imagine how he’d snapped the picture without us knowing he was there.

  “I know you’re not much for pictures, Jake-O, but I thought I’d give you your first family portrait.”

  Jake’s eyes moistened. “Beautiful, Burty. Just beautiful.”

  “Oh Burt,” I sighed. He wrapped his massive arm around my shoulder and squeezed. “No crying now or we’ll all be a puddle.”

  The florist stepped toward us, ready with giant bouquets of white tulips for Alice and myself, the one detail my dad insisted upon handling.

  “Ah, the Tulipa from the family of Liliaceae,” he sighed when he saw them. “Beautiful, elegant, and graceful. Perfect for my two favorite ladies.” Dad lifted the blossoms from their boxes. “The blooms are without fragrance, though. I suppose the Creator didn’t want to show off.”

  With my flowers in hand, I spotted Mary K in the distance. She wore a crisp white shirt and black tuxedo pants, her strawberry strands whipping in the wind. Her tilted gait was more pronounced than a week ago, and she used a cane. She snuffed a cigarette in the grass. I looked at Jake. “Can I have a minute?”

  “Of course,” he said, kissing my cheek.

  * * *

  “Quite the shindig,” she said as I approached. “Nice threads.”

  “You shucked your scrubs.”

  “I clean up okay.”

  “The cane? That’s just to make me feel sorry for you, I assume.”

  She shrugged away my inquiry. “Look, Murphy. I’m not wild about this whole wedding. But it’s not for me to say, right?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I figure you’ve stood by me while I’ve made my share of mistakes. Even if I think this is fucked up, it’s your funeral. I couldn’t miss my best friend’s funeral, right?”

  It was the most left-handed gesture of conciliation I’d ever heard, but perhaps the biggest one I could expect. “I’m glad you’re here. It wouldn’t have felt right without you.” I looked down at the cane. “Are you okay?”

  “It’s nothing. Just God thumbing his nose at me a little to keep me humble.”

  “I said some things I regret the other day,” I said.

  “You said the truth, Murphy. Truth is harsh sometimes. I figure we don’t need to be enemies. Friends are too hard to find.” She jutted her jaw. “Seems like you should get going. You’ve got people waiting.”

  Over Mary K’s shoulder, I spied Jake smiling at me in the distance. Mary K turned and looked at Jake. “I think we’re holding up the party.”

  I nodded and walked toward the music. Just then the violin melody shifted seamlessly to My Wild Irish Rose. With Alice and Burt ahead of us, I took my dad’s arm and followed them into the crowd of our loved ones under the dome of the rotunda.

  “Ready, Kitten?” Dad whispered. I realized only then that I’d halted my steps. Together, we walked through the arch of the dome. From the corner of my eye I watched Mary K as she wiped her eyes.

  Waterfalls

  “I can’t believe how good you make food taste.”

  “I’m not exactly flattered,” Jake said, pouring himself a glass of wine. “You’ll eat anything since your second trimester started. From the looks of your plate, I think the baby likes morel mushroom risotto.”

  In the three months since we’d returned from Japan, my appetite had grown right along with my pregnancy. All of my senses were more acute. I could become so overwhelmed by smells that I could barely walk down the detergent aisle in the grocery store, and my taste buds had become highly tuned for nuances of flavors I’d barely noticed before. But Jake’s cooking was—just like everything he created—an exquisite work of art. “What are these?” I asked, popping a mysterious item into my mouth.

  “You ask after you’ve already got it in your mouth?” He laughed. “Fried zucchini blossoms.”

  “It’s been frozen burritos and Pop Tarts for me since med school. You’re spoiling me.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “Did you call Burt back?” I asked. “He’s left about twenty messages.”

  “Burt Schmirt. I’m at home pampering my pregnant bride. Who cares about some installation in Timbuktu? Besides, I want to finish the garden and have everything perfect for the baby.”

  The clear June day had shrouded itself in the veil of evening. From the breakfast nook, through the diamond-shaped, leaded glass windows, we could see the sherbet sky to the west and the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge to the east. The green fingers of the Marin Headlands reached toward us from the north.

  The house’s grandeur made it difficult to think of as my home. Jake placed my collection of birds’ eggs on the man
tle, including the newest I’d found in Japan, and set the pictures of my mother and the rest of my pub family beside them. The simple objects gave me the comfort of familiarity.

  “Tell me about your day,” Jake said as he pushed his plate away. He pulled my swollen feet into his lap and kneaded the fatigue away. My daytime world was filled with the bright white light of the OR and hospital corridors. Each night, by candlelight and starlight, Jake listened to the stories of my days. He listened to the details of surgeries, the hospital gossip, and about the children who were my patients.

  “Simone is lots better,” I told him. “I got to assist while she got her heart valve transplant. It was amazing to see her fingers and toes turn pink when her blood flow improved. You should have seen her mother when we came out of the OR with the good news.”

  Jake smiled and kneaded the arch of my foot. “Simone, that’s a pretty name.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Let’s pick the baby’s name.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Jake had a way of reading my thoughts. “I do sort of have an idea for a boy’s name. My mother was Elyse Ryan before she married my dad. It might be kind of special to use her name for a new life, a happier life. Do you think that’s weird because of how she died?”

  Jake took my other foot into his hands and pressed his thumbs deep into the arch. “I don’t think we should hold it against her that she didn’t want to live in pain.” He looked up at me with such kindness that I felt I could cry. “Elyse would be a strange name for a boy, though.”

  I tossed a wadded up dinner napkin toward him. “Ryan, you dope.”

  His smile formed deep parentheses in his slim cheeks. “I think Ryan works for a girl, too. In fact, I like it better. What will your family think?”

  I hesitated. “I sort of ran it by them already.”

  Jake tossed the napkin back toward me. “You sneak. Why do I even try to pretend I have any say? The Murphy clan has voted. Ryan it is. Boy or girl.”

  He told me of his day, about the flagstone wall he’d built on our steeply sloping hillside and the crew he’d hired to help with the heavy lifting. He described the peppermint, thyme, and lemon basil by their colors, textures, and smells. “Let’s take dessert outside. I hooked up the lighting today.”

  Jake pulled me around the garden, eagerly showing off each nook. He carried a brown bag—a surprise dessert, but I’d already picked up the aroma of rich, dark chocolate. He carried the bag as we toured the garden.

  The path was covered with gravel of lapis and green glass pebbles tumbled smooth by the sea. It meandered like a shimmering stream down the hill. Perches and patios interrupted the path, some covered with arbors fashioned from driftwood twigs. Each niche was furnished with chairs and swings he’d created out of gnarled branches. Into the joints of the furniture were wedged polished river stones and shells.

  Outside of the baby’s nursery, he’d created what he called a “baby garden.” It had already begun to blossom and soon would overflow with velvety lambs’ ear plants, peppery nasturtiums, pussy willow stalks, pineapple mint, and wild strawberries—all meant to delight our child’s every sense. We sat there, amidst the budding plants, and ate almond brownies.

  As the light faded, the breeze chilled the night. Jake’s voice turned somber. “Do you think the patients remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “Do you think the bodies remember what was done to them under anesthesia? Not consciously. But do you think cutting into the body affects the spirit? That it remembers pain that the body doesn’t actually experience?”

  “I try not to let myself think of that,” I said. “It would kill me to think I was hurting those babies.” But even as I spoke, I knew the truth. Surgeons don’t like to ask themselves these questions. We prefer to be technicians as we work—cool scientists using our skills to do what is necessary to remedy ailments and thwart diseases. We anesthetize bodies and dull memories so that the human hosts of the puzzles we must solve neither experience nor interfere with our work. We omit the more grisly details in our descriptions of what the surgeries will entail: the seared flesh, taped eyelids, restrained limbs, the cruel hooks and blades, and clamps of metal instruments used on tender tissues. We shield ourselves from their faces. Drape all but what we must see to get the job done.

  Jake’s question would not allow me to omit the truth I’d always feared. “The spirit knows what the body forgets.” I swallowed hard. “I’ve seen it on their faces.”

  * * *

  Each night of that summer, we’d climb the stairs and wrap ourselves around each other. My changing body grew even more sensitive to Jake’s touch. Through our open window we breathed the salty air and listened to the foghorns moaning in the distant sea. Our liquid rhythm mimicked the undulating swells of the waves until we drifted off to sleep. I awoke each day to the Spanish chatter of Jake talking to the yard crew he’d hired, and I felt the cool, empty space on Jake’s side of the bed.

  The garden was complete by midsummer, and I noticed around that time that Jake had begun keeping notes in a leather-bound notebook. He kept it in his back pocket and scribbled and sketched into its pages many times each day. Curiosity made me sneak peeks. He wrote and drew without constraints of direction or legibility. His print swirled around the pages, flowing more like water than words. Like islands, drawings interrupted the river of words. Soon dozens of jam-packed notebooks appeared around the house. I found them tucked between cereal boxes or discarded on the closet floor, disregarded as soon as they were filled.

  As the Indian summer days of September arrived, the garden became a bursting, flowering testament to Jake’s labors, and my body blossomed right along with it. I started going up the stairs alone at night. “I’ll be up in a little while,” Jake would say, and then I’d find him in the atrium the next morning wearing his same clothing.

  One morning I was shocked to realize how thin and haggard he’d grown. “You’ve got to get some sleep,” I pleaded, “You’re going to get sick. Look how thin you’re getting.” As I grew rounder and my appetite more voracious, Jake grew leaner and his complexion more gray.

  He looked up from his notebook. “I’m sorry. It’s just when I get an image I sort of have to go with it, you know?”

  “I guess I can lose you for a little while for the sake of art. But would you eat something nutritious?” I donned a poor Yiddish accent. “Maybe some chicken soup?”

  He pulled me close and rubbed the rounding bump of my tummy with his open palm. “I’ll eat some soup, Bubbie. For you.”

  * * *

  I started watching Jake more closely over the next weeks. His lithe frame had become taught and bony. His lean face grew gaunt, the hollows under his cheeks deepening in shadow. He wore storm clouds under his eyes. His hair grew into a long, wild, unruly mass. A scraggly beard appeared in uneven patches, and he wore the same clothes for days at a time.

  I often rose in the middle of the night to find him hunched over his worktable. His face within inches of its pages, he’d scratch furiously in a notebook with a stubby pencil.

  “You need some rest,” I finally said one night at three in the morning, handing him a cup of tea. I tugged at one of his curls. “And a haircut.”

  He didn’t move. I repeated myself. “You’re exhausted.”

  “Me? No, never better. Look at this.” He splayed his notebook out for me to see. Scrawled in every direction were words and pictures that made no sense. “Do you see it? I’ve got an idea for how to get perfect sounds,” he said. Then he dipped his head back to his page like a hungry dog gnawing a bone.

  “The baby is kicking a lot,” I said, nudging my belly against him. While his left hand still scribbled, his right stroked my tummy. We’d found out at our last ultrasound that Ryan was a girl, and I could feel her kick a reply to her father’s touch. Jake turned and kissed my stomach, then darted to another table.

  “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to do surgery,” I said. “Ryan seems
to be coming between me and my patients in the OR.”

  Jake picked up two broken pieces of rock and stood clacking them together and pausing, then making hasty notes in his book. He picked up another pair of rocks and banged them, followed by another scurry to make a notation.

  “Jake, are you listening to me?” He began to search through cupboards for a pallet and paints. He sat down and began squeezing colors from tubes of paint onto the pallet. Had he stopped finding me attractive with my swollen belly and rounding hips? The distance between us felt like a growing, rotten thing—dank and dark. When I left the studio, he didn’t even look up.

  * * *

  One night in late September, I came home late from the hospital. I’d called home several times throughout the day, but had only reached the answering machine. Darkness had fallen, and San Francisco’s summer fog had crawled between the houses and the leaning cypress trees. When I pulled up to our house, not a single light shone from any of the windows. No cooking fragrances met me at the door. No fire blossomed in the fireplace. Only the damp chill of the rooms greeted me.

  “Jake!” I called. The echo of my voice against the vaulted ceilings replied. I flipped on light switches, looking for a note on the kitchen counter, but I found nothing. I wandered through the rooms and up to our bedroom, where I slid my swollen feet out of my shoes and into a pair of slippers. Then I heard the ear-stinging clang of metal against rock coming from the back of the house and detected the smell of burning leaves.

  I called Jake’s name from the balcony. All of the landscape lights were on, but I couldn’t see him. More harsh pings reverberated from the slope of the yard. I made my way downstairs, outside, and down the path, holding on to the smooth cedar rail to balance my waddling gait.

  Jake was halfway down the hill, naked, mud-covered, and cursing. He’d rigged floodlights that blasted the hillside and him with white light, making him appear like an overexposed photograph against the darkness. His hair hung in heavy, sweaty curls around his face. A small fire burned just off the path nearby, and he swung a huge sledgehammer against a stack of stones. A deafening ping rang through the night air as his hammer found its mark.