Dear Neighbor, Drop Dead

by Saralee Rosenberg

  “Ya think?” She wiped her eyes. “And don’t start in on that whole bad news can be good news crap. This is a disaster. I wanted to LEAVE Richard, not have another child with him!”

  “Well then you do what’s best for your own survival. Nobody has to know.”

  “I can’t have another abortion, okay?” Beth choked. “I had one in college and almost died from the hemorrhaging, which was so bad I needed a second D and C, and then a blood transfusion, plus I had this thing called sepsis…a high fever and then the chills. Why do you think I married Richard when I found out I was pregnant with Jessica?”

  As Beth and Mindy sat in the darkened living room sipping tea, one thing was certain. Whatever was scheduled to have taken place this morning was a scratch. There would be no meetings, no opportunities for advancement in the greeting card industry—just two moms glued to hotel couches, grappling with the implications of a pink stick.

  As best as Beth could figure, she was in her second trimester, and though she had yet to feel signs of life, this stage was eerily familiar—the heavy breasts, the stretched abdomen, and the endless urge to pee. Was this God’s way of punishing her for having undergone that risky late-term abortion in college, which nearly took her life?

  At the time she pledged she would never succumb to another, but like a broken spell, that promise had returned to haunt her amidst circumstances that were far graver than when she was nineteen and clueless. She would be bringing an unwanted baby into a broken-down marriage with little hope for a meaningful family life.

  “How could you even think that this baby wouldn’t be loved?” Mindy asked. “Maybe you just need time to let it sink in.”

  “No, I don’t. Time isn’t going to change anything. I don’t want more children or responsibility, and I certainly don’t want to be even more tied down to Richard. Plus, I would rather die than get as big as a house. Can’t you just see the looks on everyone’s faces when I show up wearing maternity clothes? My kids will be mortified, especially Jessica. When Jordy Schreiber’s mother got pregnant last year, she was like ‘Ohmygod mom, that is sooo gross’!”

  “This is good,” Mindy said. “Express your deepest fears…maybe you’ll hear yourself say something that gives you hope.”

  “Would you stop with the Oprah babble? I have no hope!” She rocked in a fetal position. “Everyone thinks I lead this charmed life but I’m a fraud! I have a shitty marriage, our finances are a mess, and my daughters think I’m this selfish bitch. It wasn’t supposed to be like this….”

  Who knew, Mindy thought? All these years she’d watched Beth’s lavish lifestyle from afar, teetering between envy and disgust: the beautiful family, the showcase house, the great cars and vacations…It suddenly gave new meaning to House of Cards. “Maybe try to look at the big picture,” she started. “You’re beautiful and talented, you’ve done a great job raising your daughters, your parents are supportive of you—”

  “I don’t want a baby!” Beth screamed.

  “Okay, but think about this. Only yesterday we were talking about how precious life was, and about how the only reason we were even born was because God spared your mom and my grandmother. Maybe this is a sign.”

  “Yes, that I should have made birth control a higher priority! If I have an abortion, it’s a huge risk medically. If I have a baby, it’s a huge risk emotionally and financially. I swear to God I should just throw myself down the stairs….”

  “Would you stop? I understand you’re in shock, but this is not a death sentence. Lots of women have late-in-life babies and it works out great.”

  “Well, good for them, but I’m not one of those mushy, maternal types who goes all gaga over little kids. The greatest day in my life was when I didn’t have to do those boring mommy-and-me classes anymore. I can’t go back to that life. I’ve done my time!”

  “I know, but look how fast those years went.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours, but I’m trying to get you to see this from a different perspective. You’re only focused on the negatives right now.”

  “That’s right. There are no positives.”

  “There are too! How about the fact there is no greater joy or anything that gives you greater hope than holding a life you created? And oh my God, the baby clothes are so cute now!”

  “Whatever…I just don’t understand how with everything you know you could tell me to go against my better judgment here. Do you honestly think Richard will somehow magically transform into this wonderful husband, and Jessica and Emma will be thrilled at the prospect of having a baby in the house, and my friends will shower me with support, and I’ll look back and say ‘Thank you, Mindy, thank you for showing me the light? This baby was the greatest thing that ever happened to me’?”

  Mindy blinked. Had Beth accused her of having a positive attitude? “You’re right. I don’t know what I’m saying. You woke me out of a dead sleep, hit me over the head with this…It’s like what happened when we found out Aaron’s mother died…I just started blabbing.”

  “If only I’d left him when the real estate market was at its peak. We could have sold the house for over a million and both started ove….”

  “…Artie’s cousin went through this, too. She already had three kids and went nuts when she found out she was pregnant again. Now that kid is the love of her life….”

  “…Jessica would be starting college when this kid was starting kindergarten….”

  “…I was really nervous about having a third child, but there’s something so special about the baby in the family…like Olympic gold….”

  “…I don’t even know how to tell Richard…he’s just crazy enough to think this is good news….”

  “I thought of something else my dad used to say. He’d tell me that the worst thing about anger and fear was that it made you overreact. Like when the stock market plunges and everyone rushes off to sell, he’d say to me, if you panic, you lose….”

  “Did you hear a word I said?” Beth looked up.

  “No, did you hear anything I said?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well I was making a lot of sense.”

  “Nothing makes sense right now.” Beth cried out. “Oh my God!”

  “What? What is it?”

  “I think it just kicked—the alien’s alive!”

  “It’s not an alien,” Mindy laughed, “it’s your baby.”

  “I know.” Beth hugged the pillow. “I know.”

  Nothing wrong with cell phones. It was the addiction to using them that stirred anger and anxiety if someone with whom you were in constant contact suddenly stopped answering or returning calls. Mindy had been trying to reach Artie since early yesterday to no avail, and the mystery deepened when her mom told her she hadn’t heard from him either. Of all times for him to be missing in action…Mindy fumed as she packed her suitcase.

  “Any luck reaching Artie?” Beth yelled from the other bedroom.

  “No, and I’m so pissed! He always does this to me. He leaves me a message, then shuts his phone off. Or I leave him all these messages, then he walks in the house and asks what’s new?”

  “Maybe something is wrong.” She walked in. “Didn’t he almost have a heart attack recently?”

  “Thanks for the reminder, but if he’s lying in a hospital bed somewhere, don’t you think I would have heard from Aaron by now?”

  “Unless maybe they were both in an accident.”

  “Why do you always have to be so positive and ruin everything?” she mimicked her. But it did remind her to try Artie again, and miracle of miracles, he finally answered.

  “Where the hell have you been? Why didn’t you call me back? I’ve been worried sick!”

  “Sorry,” Artie answered in a fog. “I lost my phone and just got it back a few hours ago…. I didn’t want to wake you. What time is it?”

  “Around seven your time I think. You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on.”

  “Hold on
…. I’m grabbing my jacket and going outside. Aaron’s asleep. We just got to bed like two hours ago. Where are you?”

  “Chicago. The contest thing was a disaster. It’s not even worth it to stay. We’re heading back to the airport to see if we can change our flights.”

  “That’s too bad, but you know what, then? Why don’t you come here instead?”

  “Come where? To Portland? Why would I do that?”

  “I have my reasons and your mom is with the kids. What’s the difference where you are?”

  “Arthur Sherman, you better promise me you didn’t buy a house.”

  “No,” he said, and laughed, “but I could. We could afford it.”

  “Thank you, Bill Gates. Now put my husband back on.”

  “I’m not joking. I have some amazing news to tell you.”

  “Oh my God! We got the insurance money?”

  “Yep, but that’s not all!”

  It’s never the things that you plan on that go right, it’s the things you don’t see coming that can turn your life around. While Beth finished packing, Mindy sat on the bed and listened to the tale.

  Seems that after Aaron resolved his police matter, he insisted on going back to his house to search for the toy fire truck that once belonged to little Jimmy Fitzgerald. But after tearing apart his room and the garage, he lost hope of finding it. Then he remembered the boxes in the basement.

  The last thing Artie wanted to do was spend time in a dungeon that reeked of mildew, beer, and cat urine, but Aaron was on a mission. “I got something back of my Mom’s, now I wanna give Jimmy something back that reminds him of his dad.”

  It was too noble a cause not to help, so Artie helped dig through shopping bags and old cartons, only to find a box shoved in a back corner underneath a garden hose and back issues of Guns and Ammo. Unlike the others, it wasn’t labeled, “Keep out Sucka” or “Nunna Ur Beeswax.”

  At first it looked like nothing more than piles of bank statements, until Artie realized he was holding the deed to the house, which was attached to a closing statement proving that Walter had bought it for cash over twenty years ago.

  “What does that mean?” Mindy’s heart raced.

  “It means that after probate, we can try to sell the house, pay off the back taxes and legal bills, then set up a nice little college nest egg for Aaron. A broker told me that this neighborhood was getting hot again and the place could be worth as much as two hundred thou. Maybe more. How amazing is that?”

  “I am so happy for him, Artie. And you must be so relieved.”

  “You have no idea…but wait. There’s more.”

  “Let me guess…Walter also owned stock in Microsoft.”

  “You’re close,” he laughed. “Davida bought stock in Starbucks.”

  “Holy shit! We may have to call him Prince Aaron.”

  “How about Prince Artie?”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. The stock certificates were in our names: Arthur and Davida Sherman.”

  “What does THAT mean?”

  “It means that I’m going to stop bitching about spending four bucks on a cup of coffee because it looks like my insane bride bought the stock from our joint brokerage account.”

  “You had that much money?”

  “Hardly, but I was thinking back. Ira had just started working at Merrill Lynch and was under a lot of pressure to meet his quota, so my dad had me open an account, and every few months he’d throw in a few thousand to give to Ira to invest. And no surprise here, Davida played the market like she played the horses. But she must have had one hell of a strong hunch about Starbucks, because I found stock certificates for fifty thousand shares dating back to 1994, the year she left me.”

  “Did you say fifty thousand shares?”

  “I did.”

  “Whoa! I wish I could multiply in my head.”

  “Trust me, after you carry the one, it’s worth…I don’t even know how much, but a lot, and the funny thing is, I’m more in shock that we almost tossed the box. We were hauling so much crap from the basement, we weren’t even bothering to look at what we were throwing out.”

  “So what made you open it?”

  “I don’t know. It looked more official for some reason. But isn’t that crazy? All these valuable documents were just rotting in a basement.”

  “Shows you how out of it they were.” Mindy sighed. “But wait. What about the fire truck?”

  “I saved the best for last…. We found it in a box of old baby clothes and it looked brand-new. Aaron is so psyched to bring it over to the Fitzgeralds’. I swear I feel like I won a contest.”

  “Funny you should say that,” Mindy laughed. “That was supposed to be me.”

  Mindy and Beth were so unglued, it was a toss-up who had the better head to drive. They settled on Mindy, as she feared Beth would intentionally drive into a guardrail. But en route to O’Hare, Mindy had a brainstorm that stole her concentration, causing her to change lanes without looking. “Sorry, sorry.” She clutched the wheel. “I must have blanked out for a second.”

  “Fine by me.” Beth stared out the window.

  “I was thinking,” she started, “and just hear me out before you say no…. Why don’t we both go to Portland?”

  “Are you nuts? The last person I want to see is Richard.”

  “I know, but think about it. It would give you the chance to have a heart-to-heart conversation without the girls interrupting, and sometimes a change of scenery works wonders.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. When I tell him I’m pregnant, he’ll get all spiritual, do the happy dance, and then tell me it’s great news.”

  “But that’s good. You want him to be excited.”

  “No I don’t. It’ll all be for show. The second it’s old news, he’ll go right back to his old tricks. I’ll never know where he is, how much money we have, if he’s telling me the truth about work…”

  “But think about this. He’s out there now because he wants desperately to start over.”

  “Yes. Without me!”

  “Or maybe because of you…Maybe he’s trying to get it together so he can come back to you and say look, I’m doing it. I’m handling my new job, I’m getting counseling—”

  “Mindy, we’re not some Lifetime movie starring Valerie Bertinelli! Richard is hopeless.”

  “No, he’s not. He sounds as lost and scared as you.”

  Beth fidgeted with her engagement ring.

  “And you have to admit, he’d be so shocked to see you, it would really make him think about your relationship. I mean who flies across the country unless they mean business? Plus, you have to admit this whole thing with both of our husbands ending up in Portland is bizarre. It has to mean something important is happening in the cosmos, right?”

  “Maybe,” she sniffed. “But I wouldn’t even know what I’d say to him, where I’d start.”

  “It’s like I told Rhoda; it doesn’t matter what you say. The fact that you’re there is the only thing that’s important.”

  Beth didn’t answer.

  “Oh, please say yes? I have such a good feeling about this.”

  “Are you always such an optimist?”

  “No, never, I swear. It’s my first time.”

  “Then what’s up with you? Why do you care if I have this kid?”

  “Are you kidding? It would be a dream come true. You’d finally be fatter than me!”

  Twenty-five

  It was déjà vu all over again: Artie, Aaron, and Richard standing around an airport due to unexpected circumstances, each lost in thought. Artie wondered if Richard knew Beth was pregnant. Richard wondered if Aaron knew he was wearing his old clothes. Aaron wondered if Artie believed him when he said he wanted to marry Rainbow. Then a woman’s cry diverted their attention.

  Richard was the first to spot the somber-faced airline personnel dotting the crowd, but it was Artie who heard mention of United’s flight 671 from Chicago and the chilling words, p
lease identify yourself to the agents.

  It’s hard to remember the details of your day only hours later, but there is no forgetting where you were the minute you learned that the plane on which your loved one was a passenger was doing figure eights over the airport to burn fuel before bracing for an emergency landing.

  “This is the same thing that happened on that Jet Blue flight a few years ago.” A woman raced past them on the way to the airline’s Red Carpet Club for a briefing.

  “What did you hear?” a breathless Artie followed.

  “Did you get through to someone on board?” Richard book-ended her on the other side.

  “My sister’s at home watching CNN.” She beat their stride. “They’re reporting the landing gear is messed up. They’ll have to do one of those foam flops. Hope the runway is long enough…”

  “It may not be mechanical,” a heavyset man tried keeping up. “My wife’s boss knows a guy at the NTSB. They’re thinking hijacker.”

  Artie felt chest pains. Plane crash? Terrorist plot? This couldn’t be happening. But when a terrified group assembled in a packed conference room, reality hit. A drama was unfolding without benefit of a script and the reaction was immediate. Grab your cell phone and laptop and get the facts.

  Unfortunately, phone contact with passengers would be impossible, as the signals had been scrambled to prevent radio interference with the tower. Or as one distraught husband said, “The SOBs are probably already doing spin control.”

  In youthful defiance, Aaron leaped over a chair and headed for the door. “I can find out what’s goin’ down,” he said. “I gotta friend whose dad works here.”

  “And I know the guys who left Fallon to set up the ad agency that won the United account.” Richard’s heart was pounding. “They might know something.”

  Artie nodded, unable to mask the terror in his eyes, or the guilt. Had he not talked Mindy into switching her flight, both of their wives would be back in New York and out of harm’s way. How he prayed not to be one of those unfortunate souls quoted in the paper whose story reeked of irony. I thought it would be nice if she came to Portland. “How do you think they’re doing?” he asked.