“But you stayed with Mother. It feels so disloyal, but I don’t think I can—”
He patted my hand. “Jake is getting good care. You’ve seen to that. You’ve got to think of yourself and Ryan. There’s nothing disloyal about that.”
Andy Williams sang the final line of his song: My huckleberry friend. Moon River and me.
“You know, Katie, I need to say just one thing to you. No problem ever got better by emptying a liquor bottle. I know this firsthand. I searched for answers and for a cure for heartache in the bottom of a glass. It can’t be found there. I’m sorry for the pain you’ve been in. For the pain you’re all in. Some of it I inflicted, I know that. I’d give anything to go back to our cucumber days.”
“Huh?”
“Something my mother used to say. You can make a cucumber into a pickle, but you can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber. Once you know something, you can’t go back to not knowing it. It changes things. I wish I could turn back the clock. I wish we could be back in our cucumber days. It wasn’t right to deceive you. I should have told you the truth when you were old enough to understand.” Dad’s cheeks went slack. “But if you respect my fathering at all, I need to say something. I’ll say it but only once.” He wiped his lips with his palm. “Tully and Alice and I will help you and Ryan as long as we’re needed. This is your home. But there are some things only you can do. She needs your comfort. She needs you to be available to her—body, mind, and soul. Ryan’s without her father, she shouldn’t be without her mother, too. You’ll regret it if you leave that child alone to deal with all of this.”
Without another word, my dad pushed his stool away from the bar and climbed the stairs, leaving me with my coffee and my thoughts.
* * *
The corridors of UCSF’s Moffit Hospital rejuvenated me. More restful than any feather bed, more refuge than any sanctuary, work was where I could reclaim my more powerful self. At the hospital, I knew what to do.
Julio Juarez, or JJ, had been born with multiple birth defects—a cleft palate and severe facial and nasal deformities—that made it difficult for him to breathe and nearly impossible for him to talk. At seven years old, JJ had already undergone twelve surgeries. I was performing the thirteenth to repair his septum and soft palate, a procedure that would improve his breathing.
“Hi, little man,” I said as I entered the pre-op examination room.
JJ sat on the edge of the exam table turning a Magic 8-Ball over and over. He looked up at me, his black eyes shining. “Cómo?” I could hear the whistle of air going through his nose as he breathed, a sound that had earned him the nickname “harmonica boy” from the cruelest playground taunters.
I looked into Mrs. Juarez’s worried face, then to JJ’s teenaged sister, Theresa, to interpret. “He asked the 8-Ball if thirteen is an unlucky number for his surgery,” she explained.
I looked into the black ball that JJ clutched. The phantom message bobbed in the blue liquid. I waited, letting the triangled answer float to the surface.
“Signs look positive,” I said, showing the ball to Theresa, who interpreted the response. Heat rose to my face as I imagined the lie I’d have told if the ball had offered a bad omen.
“You see, Senora Juarez,” I said. “Even the Mattel Company agrees with my medical advice.” Theresa interpreted my words, and the proud woman gave me her delayed smile of understanding. Like any worried mother, Imelda Juarez was desperate for confirmation that she was making the right choice.
I explained the procedure JJ would be undergoing, being careful not to describe so much that the boy would become frightened. “He’ll go to sleep and we’ll repair the hole in the wall that is in his nose. Then we’ll build it up so that it will show his handsome face.” I smiled. “Air will pass through without making the whistle sound. He’ll sleep better and not have so many sore throats.” I looked at JJ and whistled, moved my hands in a kaput gesture.
I looked into the golden brown face of the child in front of me, imagining that, as a teenager, he’d take his earliest chance to grow a mustache to cover the scar on his upper lip. After bowing her head for a moment, Imelda Juarez made the sign of the cross and then hugged me. Without a glance to Theresa she asked, “Tiene hijos?”
“She wants to know if you have children,” Theresa translated.
I nodded. “A daughter.”
Without waiting for the translation, the worried woman responded. “Por favor, trate a mi hijo como lo haría su propio bebé.”
“She wants you to treat JJ just as you do your own child.”
“Sí,” I said. I took JJ’s smooth chin in my palm. “Sí. Just like my own child.”
But what I thought was, Even better than that.
* * *
That night in the lowered lights of the pediatric floor, I stood at JJ’s bedside. From under the edges of the bandages on his face, deep purple bruises surrounded his swollen eyes. The pharmacy had provided him with his peaceful, painless sleep.
I thought about the bottomless glass of scotch that awaited me at the pub and wondered if the pharmacy might offer me simpler relief. I’d seen physicians try to navigate that slippery slope of writing their own prescriptions. Surrounded by medications, more than a few nurses and doctors sought escape from what troubled them with the capsules and tablets that passed through their fingers every day. For the first time, I sympathized with their inability to ignore the temptation.
Looking into JJ’s peace-filled face, how could I blame Jake for searching for the sense of serenity that came from being without pain? Maybe the heroin had offered that for a short time. Maybe he thought death would provide serenity forever. Medicine had failed Jake. Art was a fickle helper. Love was not enough. My treatment of JJ would repair his defect. Drugs eliminated the pain he would have suffered from the process. If only Jake could have such an outcome.
“Sleep well, mijo,” I whispered.
* * *
Wind whipped around me as I watched the swarm of six-year-old girls scurry down the soccer field in Larsen Park. This cold January day, the constant traffic on 19th Avenue provided only a distant hum behind the final championship game between Girl Power and The Skittles. An old Vought F-8 Crusader that served as playground equipment guarded the playground against invasion.
Two minutes remained, with the score tied. Mary K paced the sideline. The wind whipped strands of hair from her ponytail. Her thick glasses were speckled with mist.
“Come on, Girl Power!” Mary K shouted. “Teamwork. That’s it! Way to pass.”
Despite her efforts to hide it and the near-perfect prostheses Andra had designed, I could still detect the slightest hitch in my friend’s step as she paced. When the ball was kicked out of bounds close to Girl Power’s goal, Mary K signaled for a time out. She stood barely taller than the huddle of girls around her. “Sanchez, McAllister—” she scanned the group, “and Ryan, you’re in for Simon, Frist, and Abernathy. Switch up, ladies. This is it.” In unison, hands clasped in the middle of the huddle, the team belted out, “GIRL POWER, GIRL POWER, GO TEAM—HUP!”
The girls positioned themselves on the field, awaiting the kick from the sideline. They passed the ball, maneuvering it away from the hungry opposition.
“What a pass!” Mary K cheered. She turned to the on-looking parents with her arms spread wide. “That’s what I’m talking about!” The ball reached Ryan where she waited near the goal.
“Look alert, Ryan!” Mary K shouted.
I chanted under my breath. Kick it. Kick it.
Ryan power-kicked the ball. The goalie dove. When the ball whizzed past her grasp and into the net, the ref blasted the horn. “Game!” he shouted. “Game and championship to Girl Power, 4-3!”
The team exploded, screaming and flinging their arms around Mary K, her fists raised in victory. She broke away and jogged to the other side of the field, where she gave the other coach a hearty handshake. While the rest of the girls offered a chant of appreciation to their opponents,
Mary K lifted Ryan onto her shoulders in a single sweep while parents snapped photographs.
Ryan caught my gaze, then scanned around me. I watched as her grinning face slumped. Ryan slid from Mary K’s shoulders until her feet returned to the ground.
She stomped toward me. “What did you do?” Her words were arrows shot from a taut bow. “What did you do to make Daddy not want to come to my game? He said he would come today.” After Burt arrived, he’d taken Jake to New York to see his original therapist and adjust to our separation. The best support that Burt could provide to me was to take care of Jake so that I could focus on Ryan. They’d been due to return, but flight delays had kept Jake from getting back in time.
I held out Ryan’s sweatshirt, indicating for her to put it on. “His plane got delayed. I had nothing to do with it.”
She grabbed the sweatshirt and flung it down to my feet. “He doesn’t want to be near you. You’re always mad at him for something.” Her face was twisted into a contemptuous smirk, her arms folded in front of her chest. I felt simultaneous urges to comfort her and to slap her.
Before I could lodge another defense, Ryan turned and marched away, her dark curls a frizzy corona, bouncing as she stomped. She arrived at the distant swing set, sat down with her back to me, and dangled there.
“Bloom’s a no-show again, I see,” Mary K said as she stepped up behind me. Welby, now thigh-high to Mary K, followed obediently at her heel.
It struck me as ironic that the one person who I could not yet talk to about all that had happened was Mary K. My pride still silenced me around her.
Welby sat at our feet and looked up, his furry face full of adoration. Mary K gave him a pat, then reached into her pocket for her pack of Marlboros. She lit a match and shielded it from the wind with the cup of her hand.
I looked back to the passing traffic. “Yeah, well. Things have been pretty bad between us.”
“No shit.”
“We’re separated. Selling the house. I’m looking for a place for Ryan and me.”
“I know.” She shrugged. “Kids talk. No state secret that things haven’t exactly been hunky-dory in the Murphy-Bloom household.” Mary K nudged me with her shoulder, her attempt at affection. “Look, my only long-term romance ended like a wet fart. Who am I to judge, huh?”
Changing the subject seemed easier than trying to explain everything that had transpired in the months since Jake was hospitalized, released, and moved out. “Can I ask you something?” I said, wrapping my icy hands in Ryan’s discarded sweatshirt.
“Free country.”
“Why did you and Andra break up, anyway?”
Mary K untied the windbreaker from around her waist and put it on. She drew deep on her cigarette. “Straight question, deserves a straight answer. You probably think it was because I cheated or was an asshole or something, right?”
I shrugged.
“Thanks for the roaring endorsement,” she said, exhaling a stream of silver smoke. “Littleton wanted babies. Biological clock started ticking so loud we were nearly going deaf from it.”
“So,” I said. “Lots of lesbian couples—”
“Don’t be a retard, Murphy. I know about turkey basters and sperm banks. I know it’s possible. I just didn’t think it was such a good idea in our case.”
“But you’re great with kids.”
The vapor of Mary K’s breaths hovered in front of her face. “I’m not exactly a great long-term gamble. Littleton is the whole package. Beautiful, brilliant, kind, sexy. Healthy. She should have kids. Funny thing, but we almost did the whole baby thing. It sort of unraveled when it came to the sperm donor.”
“Is that right?”
“Her first idea was to ask one of my brothers.” She let out her one-syllable laugh. “That way the kid would at least be biologically related to me.”
“And?”
“Picture my four brothers standing in front of their kids’ first communion pictures and their statues of the Virgin Mary at their houses in Queens when my Texas beauty-queen girlfriend and I ask them to give us just a little of their jizz so we can make a baby.”
“I guess that wouldn’t go over so well,” I sighed.
“Like a turd in holy water. But you want to know the kicker, Murphy? And you of all people will appreciate this. Littleton had an idea for the perfect donor.”
I pulled Ryan’s sweatshirt tighter around my hands and waited for Mary K’s punch line.
“Bloom,” she said with a chuckle. “Thought that since I was so into Ryan it would be cool if our kid was a half-sib to her. Then you’d be like an aunt or something. Said since Bloom is a brilliant artist and everything, we might even get an artistic kid. How’s that for a kick in the head?”
I looked toward Ryan, who still sat dangling limply from the swing.
“Kid’s giving you a tough time, huh?”
“Jake’s the saint and I’m the villain.”
“They always hate the one that plays the grown-up.”
“I’m sorry about you and Andra.”
“Thanks for that.” She snuffed her cigarette with her toe. “Back to work for me. I’m up to my B-cups in stiffs.”
“On Saturday?”
“Holiday weekend. Extra big batch of drug overdoses.”
“Why?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Seems like the dealers bring in extra pure stuff for the holidays. Regular junkies know their dosage. Purity causes a bunch of ODs. So, like my dad always says, I’m like the butcher who backed into the meat grinder.” Mary K looked at me with a half grin. “Got a little behind in my work.” Mary K chuckled at her own joke.
On impulse, I leaned over and wrapped my arms around Mary K despite her stiff response. She pulled away. “A little discretion, huh?” She began to walk away then turned back to me. “We wouldn’t want people to think we’re queer or something.” Her eyebrows twitched, then she turned and walked toward where Ryan sat on the swing. She waved good-bye to me over her shoulder. Welby trotted at her heel.
Mary K sat in the swing next to Ryan’s. The two dangled there for a while. Welby plopped his head in Ryan’s lap. After a couple of minutes Mary K stood, nudged Ryan with her shoulder, and walked toward the road, her dog bounding beside her. I watched as she boarded the MUNI bus, her arms waving wildly as she negotiated passage for Welby. The door closed and the bus joined the river of vehicles.
Ryan sauntered toward me, her head hanging. “Can we go to Just Desserts for carrot cake?” she asked, her voice still pinched but her facial expression softened.
I turned to see the back end of the bus as it disappeared over the hill. “Carrot cake sounds pretty good to me.”
Purgatory
“Whoa!” I said as I opened the front door to the house. Jake stood in the foyer looking as surprised as I felt. He’d been home from Serenity Glen for nearly a month. I’d seen him only during visitation with Ryan and to sign papers with the realtor for the final sale of the house. “I thought you’d left for New York already,” I said.
“I leave in a few hours.”
“Yeah, well, I just got off work and thought I’d get the mail and—”
“I put it all in the bowl on the sideboard.”
“I’ll put in a change of address.”
We spoke like awkward unfamiliars. The discomfort of it made my scalp itch.
He looked past me. “Where’s Ryan?”
“Sleepover at a new friend’s house.”
“Good,” Jake said, studying the floor at his feet. “She seems to be making friends.”
“She should be with kids her age instead of just hanging out at the pub all the time.”
“Murphy’s is a pretty nice place for a kid.” It registered as he said it that Jake was losing not only Ryan and me, but the family that had adopted him as well. Another loss. “So the house sale is finalized? When does it close?”
“A long close. Forty-five more days. I’ll start packing this week. Just tell me what you want.”
We stood there in the silence. It had been nearly six months since we’d been completely alone together. Even our walks in Napa had been to public places. A feeling of being overexposed ran through me.
“Cup of tea?” he asked.
I attempted a nonchalant tone. “Sure. Why not?”
We sat at the kitchen table where Ryan’s highchair had once crowded the space and we’d pried stuck-down Cheerios from the terra cotta floor; where we’d worked crossword puzzles on Sunday mornings. Now Jake and I balanced the awkwardness of strangers with the gravity of the history we’d shared.
At first we exchanged niceties—my work, Ryan’s smooth entry into the first grade, updates on the gang at Murphy’s. As each topic waned, it was replaced with a palpable silence that throbbed behind my eyes.
“This is weird,” Jake said. “How are you, Kat? Really?”
I looked back out the window, searching for anything familiar that might anchor me but finding nothing but a horizon veiled by fog. “So you’re doing a commissioned installation, Burt tells me.”
“Burt set it all up. Hired an assistant to work with him since he’s doing more of his own work right now. But you know Burt. Delegating isn’t his strong suit. Did you know he’s painting?”
I wrapped my fingers around my teacup and felt myself smile. “His gallery show, remember? It was great. Especially the portraits.”
Jake nodded and looked off into the foggy distance, his face lined with remorse. “I always knew he was talented, but—”
“So tell me about this New York installation.”
“Burt sold it big, I guess. A temporary sculpture in Central Park. More than an acre, actually. Big sponsors, so I can help pay off—” The words seemed to catch in his throat.
“What will the piece be?”
“It’s not fully planned. Burt’s going crazy, of course, wanting to know the details. It’s all still forming. I’ve been thinking a lot about cracks, though.”
I found myself smiling. “Cracks?”
Fire & Water Page 26
