Then Kate drove her car into the garage and shut it off.
Kate heard the final kerchock-clang as the garage door settled closed, followed by a metallic whir as it came to rest. She got out of the driver’s seat, picked up her sandwich, and got in the backseat, next to where Robin had last been seated. He’d always sat behind the front passenger seat so Kate would only have to turn her head a little bit to see his smile.
She ate her sandwich while staring through the front windshield at the candle. It winked at her, as if it knew a secret.
The avocado was perfect, just exactly the right texture against the bread. The lemon was almost sweet in its intensity. Kate felt a wild rush of pleasure as she ate, and pushed down the guilty feeling she always had.
Still alive.
She and Nolan were still alive, and Robin wasn’t. Robin, who had hated avocado and every single kind of cheese except American, which most of the time Kate refused to buy for him, maintaining that protein had to actually be made of something more than just colored chemicals. An ache tugged the back of her throat. She should have let him have more fucking American cheese. Cheez Whiz in a can. McDonald’s cheeseburgers. All the things they’d kept from him, to keep him what? Healthy. What a goddamn joke.
An artist Kate knew, Judy, had eaten only organic food. She’d raised her own fruits and vegetables most of her life, and was a vegetarian. She exercised and volunteered and went hiking in Nepal. She ran marathons raising money for worthy causes. She’d never eaten a single item of processed food. She’d died of ovarian cancer the previous year.
Kate licked her fingertips clean of bits of mayo and crumbs, then ate the tiny piece of tomato that had fallen onto the plate. Every last bit, eaten.
Then she reached forward into the front area and turned on the car.
The Saab’s engine was still strong—it gave a low growl as it came back to life and then purred quietly inside the closed garage with barely a throb as it idled.
Kate started to count, watching the candle on the workbench. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand.
Then, when she reached forty, as the candle guttered for the first time, as her courage guttered in the same way, she leaned forward quickly and shut off the car. As she always did, she threw open the backseat door and ran to punch the garage door button on the wall next to the light switch. It rolled up angrily, shaking the wall she leaned against.
She blew out the candle and then sank to sit on the top step.
She stared at her car. She indulged in her ritual only every once in a while. It used to be more often, but now it was down to once every three or four months. Whenever she really, really needed it.
Kate knew (now) that carbon monoxide bound itself to the hemoglobin in the blood with a much higher affinity than oxygen did. Once bound, it wouldn’t let go, and less and less oxygen would be carried in the blood. It sounded like a violent takeover of the body, but actually it was peaceful, causing sleep, then death. It should be louder, she always thought. It should be something that was obvious, like the light of a candle going out, or the shoonk of a car door slamming shut. Not this silent, incredibly fast killer. A nurse in the ICU had told her it could take as little as five or ten minutes to cause death. A car idling in a cold garage. How many times did it happen accidentally in the United States every year? She’d read about an ambulance crew who had pulled into a cold bay at a hospital, forgetting to crack the outer door while they let it idle as the three paramedics napped, the heater keeping them warm. No one woke up. What must that have been like for the hospital workers, to come upon an ambulance full of their own? Accidentally asphyxiated.
Kate scrubbed her face with her hands. Her eyes itched suddenly and she rubbed them so hard she couldn’t see through the dancing black spots for several seconds afterward. Then she got in the car, pulled it out, parked it in its usual space in the driveway, and shut the garage door from the outside, one last time.
She squinted, ignoring the rain that seeped down the back of her sweater, and looked at her house, trying to see it with new eyes. It was sweet-looking. Quaint. The colors, dark green and brown, were old-fashioned. A stranger walking by would think that if anyone had died there, it would have been a lovely old couple who probably died within days of each other, unable to live without the partner they had spent sixty years needing.
Not an eight-year-old boy. And not, until the paramedics brought him back, a young father who would do anything, anything for his only child.
Still standing in the spring rain, she held the plate so tightly she worried it might break between her fingers, and felt the familiar feeling course through her. It felt like the playacting she did when she couldn’t do anything else. It felt like sleeping with a man you knew was dangerous, a man who could snap your neck while you came, who might wring your very final breath from your body, and still you had to sink to your knees in front of him. A terrible, awful fuck, one that you had to have, even if it was your last.
Chapter Fifteen
Birth
May 1992
I n the maternity ward’s hospital bed, Kate clung to two things: the cold metal side rail that didn’t bend no matter how she pulled, and the fact that she hated Grant Masterson and his wife so much that she’d probably never have the energy to dislike another person again.
“You’re so beautiful, Kate,” crooned Grant, his perfect dark hair falling in a wave off his forehead. “You’re so strong. You’re doing everything right.”
From behind him, his wife, Stella, pressed her palms together as if in prayer and beamed beatifically at Kate. “If it’s a girl, we’ll give her your middle name. Out of respect for your great sacrifice.”
“And if it’s a boy . . .” Grant trailed off and looked at his wife. They both smiled.
But Kate didn’t believe them. They didn’t feel real. Something was wrong. She wished desperately (again) that Sonia had stayed after checking her in, but “something” had happened at the pool that needed her presence. A good old-fashioned drowning was the only thing Kate could think of that should cause Sonia to run away the way she had, but it was probably a chlorine shipment or something. It was strange, and upsetting—Sonia had been so present lately, toward the end of her pregnancy, as if she really, truly cared. As if it hurt her that her child was giving up a baby, as if she almost believed they were a real family again. And then, two hours earlier, she’d gotten a look in her eyes like a panicked horse and fled, leaving Kate to do this by herself. Hours from becoming a mother herself, Kate was pretty sure that was a fucked-up maternal instinct.
“Where will you take the baby?” Kate asked the couple she now hated.
Grant frowned. “What do you mean? You want to know where our house is? I’m not sure—”
“I mean in the world. Where will you go together?”
Stella stepped forward. “Oh, we don’t travel much. Not safe, not in this political climate. We’ll keep to the good old US of A, and that’s good enough for us.” Her words sped up. “Of course, the baby’s safety is the most important thing to us.”
Kate had liked them—she really had. They’d been one of two couples she’d asked to meet, and after she’d met them she’d told her adoption counselor that she didn’t need to meet the lesbian couple. It would be too hard to go through that again, looking into eyes that were desperate to take what she didn’t want. Grant and Stella had had to smile and appear friendly and, worst of all, normal, while they auditioned for the role of their lives. When they’d met, Kate had liked Grant’s wide, trustworthy face, but now, from her position of pain, she hated his teeth—such small incisors. They were unnatural. And Stella looked desperate, as if she were ready to rip the child from Kate’s womb—her jaw gritted in what appeared to be worried ecstasy.
Kate’s eyes rolled back as the deep red pain moved through her once again. She held on to the rail as hard as she could, trying to breathe. Nothing else existed but the pain, not the baby or even herself. Just pain
. Then, after what felt like hours, the pain eased like and she lay back on her pillow panting. “Marybelle,” she said.
The adoption counselor stepped forward. “Yes.”
“Can I . . . talk to you?”
Marybelle met her gaze. “Of course.” She ushered the couple out professionally while they murmured encouraging things to her and was back in a moment. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
Kate didn’t know how to say it.
“Have you changed your mind?”
“I can’t, can I? It’s too late.”
“We talked about that. Nothing is too late. Remember?”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said on the end of an exhalation. Then, “I’m so sorry. Has my mom called you or anything?” Kate mopped her sweaty forehead with the wet washcloth the nurse had given her the last time she’d checked in, when Kate was still only four centimeters dilated. Mom. Please, Mom.
“I’m sorry. No, she hasn’t returned my messages. I’ve got a coworker driving by the pool now to check on her.” Marybelle squeezed her shoulder, but Kate could read the disappointment in her eyes. “What are you thinking? What do you want?”
I want my mother. But she was gone.
I want Nolan. But Nolan was so far away from her, so long gone that she could barely see in her mind what color his voice had been. Dark blue like jeans? Or like the ocean the day before a storm? It wasn’t clear anymore.
Three days after they’d broken up, he’d started calling. Three, six, eight times a day. The first few times, Sonia held the phone toward Kate, expecting her to take it. Kate shook her head and continued watching The Price Is Right. “She’s not here,” Sonia said roughly into the phone. Kate had made the mistake of answering the phone just once. Hearing his voice, the way he’d said, “Katie, please,” had made her hands tremble so hard she’d dropped the phone. As she picked it up again, she was able to find the strength to say, “Are you still going? Still breaking up with me?”
“Yes,” he’d said. “But you have to understand—”
She’d hung up.
“What an asshole,” her mother had muttered, surprising Kate. Her mother had touched her on the head then, as she passed on her way to bed. Just the one light brush on her hair, so soft she barely felt it.
The calls had stopped soon after that—she didn’t know what her mother had told him to make him quit calling, but she didn’t care. Whatever it was, it worked. Somehow, Sonia and she had reached an odd truce, as if Sonia having to readjust her measure of Nolan had given those points to Kate. She hadn’t protested when Kate told her she was switching to the continuation high school. They watched television in the dark and laughed at the same times. Kate talked her mother into getting a small pit bull mix, a gray-and-white female who wanted to cuddle constantly. Once Sonia had even put her hand on Kate’s stomach. Her face, usually so terse and drawn, had softened. “Poor child,” she’d said, and Kate didn’t know which child she’d been referring to. She didn’t ask.
Now, at the hospital alone, Kate told Marybelle, “I don’t know what I want.” It was as if she couldn’t help but hurt everyone now. As if it was her job or something. “But I know I don’t want that couple. It’s horrible. I’m a terrible person.” She started to cry again. She’d broken absolutely everything, from top to bottom, and this was just one more thing—breaking Grant’s and Stella’s hearts.
“Are you sure?”
Kate gulped and nodded. She had only a few minutes, five at the most, before the pain took her outside herself again. She had to be clear. “Not them.”
“I’m going to have to tell them.” Marybelle looked at the floor—this was hard on her, too.
“I’m so sorry.” The guilt and sorrow seemed to trigger the next contraction—it tore into her, and then another one, stronger and more demanding, came pressing on its heels.
“And then what?”
Kate could read the question on her face. “No. Not me. I still don’t want to keep—can’t—”
Marybelle glanced at her watch and up at the face of the large clock on the white wall. “What about that lesbian couple whose profile you liked?”
Gripping the sheet between her fingers, hating how it gave so easily, Kate said, “Tell them to hurry.”
• • •
The two women were there almost instantly, miraculously. And they were different from their picture. In the photo, Isi had looked über-butch, all flattop and button-down shirt, chest stuck out as if she had something to prove. Marta had looked a little too eager, her cheeks too red.
But as they entered the hospital room, Kate felt hope bloom for the first time. Isi came toward her, ignoring Marybelle’s attempt to introduce them formally. “You poor thing,” she said. “Who’s here to help you with this?” When Kate’s eyes filled with sudden, stupid tears again, Isi just took her hand and held on while another wave of pain rocked her for long minutes. Isi’s hand felt so much stronger than the metal rail of the bed, and when the contraction stopped, she didn’t let go.
“What’s your favorite color?” Kate asked Isi. It wasn’t a test, although Isi probably didn’t know that.
Isi smiled, and her eyes were so soft against the severe angles of her jaw. “Would you believe pink?”
Pink was Isi’s voice, a soft rose with lilac on the edges. “I believe it.”
Marta, on the other side of her, brushed the hair from Kate’s sweaty forehead. “Butch in the streets,” she said, and Isi said, “Oh, stop,” and the affection in their voices flowed over Kate like sunshine. It didn’t feel like they were auditioning—it felt like they wanted to be there, like somehow they cared, and it had been so long since she’d felt it that she leaned toward it like a sun-starved daisy.
Isi said, “This isn’t about what you choose to do. That’s your decision, and it’s none of our goddamn business. But please, let us stay? You can’t be alone for this, and we don’t want to be anywhere else.”
Kate heard truth in her voice, and that was the moment she decided.
Marybelle excused herself quietly, and when the nurses weren’t checking Kate or adjusting the IV, the three of them were alone. During the contractions, Isi propped her up, never letting go of her hand, and Marta murmured words, endearments, and encouragements that didn’t mean anything by themselves but, strung together on the thread of her dark green voice, soothed Kate. During the euphoric lulls, she fired questions at them.
“Where do you live?”
“What do you eat?”
“Favorite grocery store?”
“Dogs or cats?”
“Football or baseball?”
The answers didn’t matter—Kate couldn’t have given a crap about whether they ate meat or not (Isi did, Marta didn’t) or whether they liked cats or dogs (both). She just wanted their conversation to continue, to hear the way they spoke together, teasing gently, finishing sentences for each other. Fondness. Love. They were a family, just the two of them together.
“What languages do you speak?”
Marta’s eyes widened. “Ooops. We fail.”
But Isi said, “All right, you got us on that one, but we can ballroom dance—does that count?”
Pain was coming faster now, the contractions closer together, and Kate wished she hadn’t passed on the epidural. Stupid. What had she been thinking? Stupid, stupid. “Show me,” she whispered.
For the first time since they’d entered the room, Isi let go of her hand and offered it, across the narrow bed, to Marta. “Shall we?”
“I can’t believe we’re going to do this.” But as she moved around the small room to Isi’s side, Marta’s face had a radiance that Kate wanted to never look away from. They did the fox-trot to silent music, and Kate watched, transfixed. They fit each other, Isi’s leg moving comfortably between Marta’s thighs as they turned tightly in the small space. They rested against each other.
Then things for Kate sped up, and every noise was dark blue in her ears. Breathing was painful but she didn�
�t stop. The moments before pushing were pure hell. Pushing, though, was a deep relief, the only thing she’d ever be able to do again. The way the women held her hands hurt, too, but she begged them not to let go. And they didn’t—they held on tighter. The doctor was there then, saying things that didn’t make sense until Isi translated them, until Marta said them over again in her ear.
Then there was a darkness she couldn’t remember, even seconds later. She knew she couldn’t do it again, no one could live through this, and then she did it again, one last push as she cried for her absent mother again like a child, and then the relief wasn’t relief so much as a difference, a change of air pressure, noises of the room falling back into her ears, coming back into herself, and as the nurse prepared to hand her the baby, Kate shook her head and took her hands away from them, closing them into fists.
“Them,” she said, closing her eyes, wishing she never had to open them again. “She goes to them.”
Chapter Sixteen
Wednesday, May 15, 2014
11 p.m.
Kate remembered seeing the road crew Nolan mentioned in his e-mail. She even remembered the man she’d stared at. He’d had shoulders like Nolan. She’d loved that Nolan had always been recognizable even from a distance in that his shoulder blades were so pointed, almost sharp. If he’d had wings, they’d have poked out right there. She had liked to touch them in the dark, liked to sleep with the flat of her palm on that bone, as if she could keep him from flying away in the night. She’d told him she would have been able to pick his shoulders out of a lineup. He’d laughed, but she wasn’t kidding. She could have.
Under his orange vest, that man had had those shoulders. Kate hadn’t been able to see his face under the hard hat, and she hadn’t tried. It would have been too much of a disappointment, seeing someone else’s expression over a body that looked so much like Nolan’s.
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