“Agreed,” Jamie said. “Though I’ll be honest, I had to remind myself of that this morning after I saw the front page. The first thing I thought was, Did Cal really do this? But then I remembered that Max Brady had seen the commotion outside. When he heard the story, that it was a father-son thing, he thought it was absolutely hysterical. He probably told the old man and then Cal had no choice.”
Carla suddenly reopened her inquiry.
“So, Jamie, why did you cross?” Only this time she looked directly at him and her hand reached across the table, almost to his. “Why couldn’t you wait another day or two—let this play out? It will, you know. It always does.”
He took a deep breath, slumped in his seat. Feeling relaxed, much to his surprise.
“Well, I got a little scared. But not of being out of work—at least I’d like to think not.”
“Of what then?”
“Of losing my own little boy.”
“Losing? How?”
“The day we went out, my ex tells me she might have a new job. In Seattle.”
“Seattle, Washington?”
“That’s what I said. The other side of the goddamn country,” Jamie said. He hoped Carla—with a silver crucifix resting on her sweater—didn’t take offense at his language. He doubted it.
“Because you’re out of work for a couple of days?”
“Well, honestly, I don’t know what she’s thinking, if she panicked because of the strike or it’s something else,” Jamie said. “Her career, a guy—I have no idea. But maybe I was hoping that it was the strike. And if I just got back in the building, she would forget about going. Because there’s nothing I can think of that would be worse than her taking him—Aaron—that far away. Not having to cross a picket line or put up with my father or even looking like an idiot on television and on the front page of the paper. Not after I screwed everything up.”
“You mean when you missed the birth because of your story?”
Jamie shot her a furrowed look, wondering how she knew. He had never confided in colleagues, with the exception of his cousin. Had Steven blabbed his personal business all over the newsroom?
“I took the calls that day,” Carla said. “Your wife’s before she left for the hospital. And then her mother.”
Jamie playfully slammed his palm against his temple.
“Duh,” he said. “But it actually was her aunt.”
“Okay, her aunt actually called from the hospital a couple of times, as I recall. I told her, ‘Soon as we hear from him.’ But I left the office early because Dolores was in the hospital at the time. I was always running here, there. I gave the message to the clerk.”
Jamie couldn’t remember the name of the kid who had ultimately delivered it when he’d called in. The tall one with the long blonde ponytail who had dropped out of Columbia Journalism School a couple of months after arriving from Des Moines. He’d bragged about how he’d told Willis in his interview, “I just want to be around a real fucking newsroom, not professors in love with the sound of their own voice.”
Willis told him, “Watch your effin mouth. You’re hired.”
That night, Willis told Jamie, “I’ve got your replacement on the desk, the hayseed who’s been working weekends part-time. Start your reporter’s tryout next week.” The kid stayed a few months before going home to Iowa, rumored to be in need of drug rehab. Jamie could still hear the Midwest twang from that afternoon call on the day of the real estate sting, him practically bursting to share with Willis how well it had gone.
“Whoever took the call wrote down that it’s really important,” the kid said. “Urgent.” Jamie’s heart sank. He berated himself for not thinking of calling home from the pay phone at the diner before all hell broke loose with the sting. He hung up and dialed but all he got was Karyn’s tinny voice on the answering machine.
“So I took off like a bat out of hell from the diner,” he said. “I was on the Belt Parkway in minutes. But then there was this traffic jam around Kennedy Airport. I was beside myself. Pounding the horn like I was going into childbirth. I eventually made it past the rubbernecking delay and across the Whitestone Bridge. I got home pretty fast after that. I parked at the curb, raced up the walk to find this note taped to the front door.”
“What did it say?” Carla said.
“Two words, upper case,” Jamie said. “AT HOSPITAL…”
“So she’d gone into labor while you were in Brooklyn?” Carla said.
“At that point, I still had no idea. I was at the house, and the lights were all out. It was raining and I was standing there trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I thought, Could I have just forgotten our Lamaze class? Even though things weren’t that good between us, I hadn’t missed a class. I mean, I’d kept thinking, Maybe once the baby is born she will calm down and things will get better. But I knew something more had to be up.”
“How far was the hospital?” Carla said.
“About four miles north on the Saw Mill Parkway in Mount Kisco. I got there in about fifteen minutes, parked on the street by a meter. I sprinted like a madman into the lobby and up to the desk. I’m sweating, breathing, my heart is about to burst through my chest. I found out that Karyn had been admitted about three and a half hours earlier to the maternity ward. I didn’t even wait for the elevator—I just ran up the stairs a couple of flights. I got to within about five feet of the room she was in and all of a sudden Karyn’s Aunt Sandra came out, like she’d been notified by the front desk that I was coming.
“She stood between me and the door and said, ‘Your son is down the hall in the nursery. He was touch-and-go for a while, but the doctor says he’s going to be fine. He’s all hooked up to monitors, but it looks worse than it is. Karyn said the two of you hadn’t picked a name so she took the liberty since you weren’t here. His name is Aaron.’
“I’m thinking, Aaron? Where the hell had that one come from? It had never come up. Karyn liked J names—Jared, Jason, Jeremy. She always claimed to like my name. I was standing there in a daze, and I remember the only thing I could think of was that Aaron rhymed with Karyn.”
“Did they at least let you see him?” Carla said.
“Yeah, we walked over to the large nursery window, and Sandra tapped the glass and pointed. He was in an incubator that was connected to all these wires and machines. They were monitoring everything, apparently. He had on one of those wool caps with a pom-pom. He was kicking the blanket like a wild man. And then the aunt—Sandra—said, without even looking at me, ‘Karyn does not want to see you. She also would like you take your things from the house before she gets home.’ ”
“Wow, great timing there—what did you say?” Carla said.
“Nothing, really. It was all so surreal, really crazy in the context of the setting—I mean, who can imagine being shown your newborn son and being told to get out of your house in the next breath? I just stood there, kind of mesmerized by the sight of him. I was trying to come to grips with his name. Aaron. Aaron Kramer. I kept mouthing the name and didn’t even realize that Aunt Sandra had gone back to be with Karyn. I stood by the window for a long time, must have been about forty-five minutes, just watching him. Then his eyes closed and the kicking from under the blanket stopped. Another new father came up alongside me and was waving to his baby. His parents or in-laws were there too. That kind of snapped me back to reality. Got me upset. I decided it was time for me to go.”
“When did you call your parents and tell them they had a grandson?” Carla said.
“I actually did that in the lobby. I remember thinking I would hang up if my father answered because there was no way I could talk to him in that moment. But my mother picked up. I said, ‘It’s a boy.’ And she said, ‘A boy? You mean…oh my god…the baby…I’m a grandmother?’
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m at the hospital. The baby is fine but I missed the birth, my marriage is over and I don’t know what I’m going to do next.’ She didn’t seem to hear what I was saying becaus
e she was so excited. She started asking grandma questions: ‘How much did he weigh? What time was he born? How is Karyn? When can I see him?’ I said, ‘His name is Aaron. I don’t know when you can see him. I don’t know. I don’t know.’
“Then it hit her. She said, ‘Jamie, what did you say about your marriage?’ I just said, ‘Mom, I’m sorry. I have to go. I just have to go.’ I hung up on her and drove back to the house, fell asleep on the couch. I never spent another night there. I stayed with Steven for a few days in the city and was back living in Brooklyn by the end of the week.”
“And that’s it?” Carla said.
“That’s it, pretty much,” Jamie said.
She looked at him incredulously, not quite stifling a laugh.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Carla poured more Coke into Jamie’s glass. Foam rose over the top and down the side, onto the table.
“God, I spill everything,” she said. “I’m like the world’s messiest person.”
She didn’t seem eager to grab a sponge from the sink to clean up the spill. After living with Karyn, who practically followed Jamie around the house with a dust buster when he carried food from the kitchen, he wanted to give her a hug.
“So you’re really telling me that your marriage ended because you couldn’t predict that your son would be born a few weeks early and you were working in the city?” Carla said.
“I could have—should have—checked in,” Jamie said. “I got so wrapped up in the stupid story.”
“And so what?” she said. “You were trying to make a living so you could, you know, feed the baby after he was born. How about the fact that soon as you heard you got off your butt and got yourself to the hospital and probably almost killed yourself driving like a maniac?”
“I guess,” he said.
“Guess nothing,” she said. She shook her head, more scornful now. “You want someone who fucked up, excuse my French? Go find Robbie’s poor excuse for a father.”
“I know, it’s not like I committed a crime,” Jamie said. “But it wasn’t just the birth. There were other problems. Something happened to us as soon as we left the city. It was never the same. Maybe it was never that good. But even though the pregnancy was a surprise, nothing we planned, I was good with it, really. I just couldn’t talk to her after that, couldn’t get on the same page. All she seemed to care about were the colors for the baby’s room, how long she intended to breastfeed, whether we should use those cloth diapers.”
“Eww, pain in the ass,” Carla said. “Did she?”
“For two or three months. But then she said he was going right through them and she cancelled the service. I think she realized the environment wasn’t that great a priority when it was me picking up the cost for disposables.”
Carla seemed humored by how the subject had come back around to diapers.
“I’ll bet they’re not charging white people in Westchester what I pay,” she said, defiantly.
She lifted Jamie’s half-full glass off the table without asking him and put it in the sink. Carla was still calling the shots. It was time to go.
“There’s a car service across the street,” she said. “We can get you back to your apartment, and I’ve got something that I need to do.”
With a raised index finger, she signaled him to wait a moment while she consulted her mother in the bedroom.
“Is your mom okay?” Jamie asked after she returned, and they were in the hall. Carla locked the door behind her.
“She’s fine, just a little shy, especially speaking English.”
The driver was waiting in the tiny storefront for a fare. The car—weathered and muffler-challenged as it was—was parked out front. The engine convulsed so badly at the first red light that the driver had to slip into neutral and keep his foot on the gas to prevent a stall. Jamie shot Carla a crooked smile while they sat in the back seat. The driver cursed under his breath in Spanish after steering into traffic on the service road of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Carla suddenly leaned closer to Jamie and gave him a smack on the knee.
“I’ll bet she never wanted a husband—just a house and a baby that she could have all to herself.”
“Who?”
“Her, your wife.”
“Ex-wife. We made it official about six months after Aaron was born.”
“Yeah, okay. My theory is that she felt her clock ticking, she found a nice guy who probably believed her when she said the pregnancy was an accident.”
“Well, she said…”
“Oh, I know what she said. But I’d bet you it was bullshit. Someone like her, with the whole suburban thing going on, it was no accident. She was probably calculating what day of her cycle it was even as you were sticking it in.”
Jamie laughed, but he also felt his face redden.
“Did I embarrass you?” Carla said. “I’m sorry. I have a habit of saying whatever comes into my head. No filter.” Her hand brushed his cheek and dropped to his shoulder, where it remained for a few seconds.
“Sometimes I did wonder if maybe marriage was what she wanted only because her mother had died and her father had remarried and moved to California,” he said. “She had a hard time getting his attention after that. She was an only child, alone in New York except for her aunt.”
Carla shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she was just being greedy. Let me tell you, a lot of women think they want it all—career, man, house, kids. But when they get it, they can’t handle it. Too many responsibilities, too many things going on, so they decide they have to choose. The career goes first, then the man. The baby is always the most important thing and of course you have to have the house.”
“Is that right?” Jamie said. He nodded thoughtfully. “You’re quite the expert. You must be related to Oprah.”
The needling was Carla’s cue to continue, but the driver swerved to change lanes and pass an idled truck. Propelled sideways, practically into Carla’s lap, Jamie broke his momentum by clutching both her shoulders.
She smiled as he settled back in his seat. In the process of lurching and disentangling, her hand became clasped in his.
“Take me, for example,” Carla said. “I have my mother to look after. She used to work cleaning apartments in neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. But she started having problems with her back, and then Dolores passed, and now we have Robbie. So she watches him during the day, and I give her a break when I get home from work. I don’t have room in my life for a man. And to be honest, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t need one.”
Not sure if she was joking or not, Jamie nodded.
“Men require so much energy,” she said. “Even the good ones are so damn needy. Like you, Jamie.”
“So I’m a good one?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because you’re willing to believe that something might be your fault, even when it obviously isn’t.”
“And that’s good?”
“That’s good, very good. It shows you have a conscience.”
The car turned off Atlantic Avenue onto Hicks Street. It rumbled to a red light at Montague.
“Most men, no matter what they do, will convince themselves they’re justified in doing it,” Carla said. “And newspaper reporters, they’re usually the worst. Most of the guys I’ve known around the Trib would never have let themselves feel guilty about missing a baby being born. They would have gone on about deadline and how important the story was, like it was their moral duty.”
“You don’t think reporters are sincere about what they do?” Jamie said.
Carla rolled her eyes.
“Puh-leeze,” she said.
“Come on, really?”
“No, actually, I don’t,” she said, her voice rising. “At least not in the way they’d like people to think. I’m not saying they aren’t good people for the most part, or they don’t take pride in their work or that newspapers aren’t an important public
service. I just think reporters act too much like they’re not in it for the same reasons that people do most things.”
“And that is?”
“You know, ego, money—to go to the bar afterward and hope that some babe believes they are important enough to screw them.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jamie said. “And what about the babes with notepads?”
“Same thing,” Carla said, laughing. “They just want to be respected in the morning.”
“I see,” Jamie said.
“Seriously, though. I always think it’s freaking hilarious when newspaper guys accuse people—like politicians—of grandstanding for things, of only being committed to an issue because they want to advance their careers. What’s the difference? Why does a newspaper columnist go all crazy about something and put on a big show? Isn’t it to get noticed for the sake of his career? To get a big book deal? Isn’t that ambition all the same thing?”
“And my cousin?” Jamie said.
“What about him?”
“You don’t think he’s genuine about the columns he writes? Even the ones he knows Brady probably won’t put in the paper?”
“I guess he is,” Carla said, sighing. “At least at the moment he’s writing them.”
Jamie shrugged. He was aroused by her cynicism but more so by the fact that her hand remained nestled in his.
“Don’t be insulted, Jamie. I’m not trying to say that Steven or any of you guys aren’t good people. Shit, my standards for men have never been too high, with some of the creeps I’ve experienced and what my sister got for her trouble. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I really think that you’re one of the good ones, and it’s too bad that you don’t seem to have a clue.”
As the driver pulled his car over in front of Jamie’s building, she leaned forward and kissed him, so delicately that their lips barely touched. But she held it long enough for the tips of their tongues to meet.
“Pay the fare,” Carla whispered. She turned to unlock the back-seat door on the driver’s side.
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