Isabelle is immediately struck with the sense that climbing the steep stairway of railroad ties up to Orson Pratt’s house takes much more energy than she remembered. With Casey by her side, she would float upward to the front door, but today it’s hard work. Everything seems harder without Casey. She admits this to herself, but she won’t be undone by it. She’ll just tackle each thing as it comes along, she tells herself. And then he’ll be home and everything will ease into effortlessness again.
“This is the last time I’ll bother you,” Isabelle says as Orson opens the front door. His expression is hard to read. Is he annoyed with her still?
She hands him a small slip of paper with her new information carefully printed on it. “Here’s my new address—I’ve rented a duplex—and my phone number.”
“No more Hotel Durant?”
“God, no.” And then Isabelle adds, as if she’s made an unprecedented discovery, “Hotels are expensive.”
“No kidding?” And he’s smiling.
“Obvious, I know,” and she smiles back. A small détente.
“Oakland?” he asks her, looking at the address.
“Yes, but it’s just off College, not too far away. In Rockridge.”
“Did you walk?”
“Yes.”
And then Orson has an idea. “Wait a minute,” he says, and disappears into the house. He’s back immediately, a set of keys in his hand. “Take Casey’s Jeep. It’s just sitting in the garage taking up space. Along with all his other things,” Orson adds tartly and unnecessarily, despite his best intentions of holding his tongue.
“I don’t know.”
“Couldn’t you use a car, now that you’ve moved?” He watches her eyes fill with tears. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s just so kind of you to think of it.” Why is she crying? She has no idea. All she knows is that she’s embarrassed in front of this man she hardly knows.
“Are you all right?”
And now the tears won’t stop. She’s not sobbing or hysterical, she’s just awfully tired and worn-out and feeling alone and she can’t find the off valve for the tears.
“Come in,” Orson says.
“No, I couldn’t…”
“Just until you stop crying.” What else can he do? Send a crying woman away to weep alone?
He opens the door wider and Isabelle steps into the familiar living room, only now it looks like a photo from a home improvement magazine, everything dusted and cleaned and in its place. Perfect Iceland poppies, tissue-thin orange petals crinkled and curved into cups of color, sit in a crystal vase on the coffee table. All the throw pillows are plumped and arranged by contrasting colors on the neutral couch.
Isabelle sinks into a corner of the soft sofa and Orson sits at the opposite end, back straight, hands on his knees, watching Isabelle try to get a handle on her tears.
“I’m so sorry,” Isabelle says as she rummages in her large, satchel-like purse for a Kleenex. “I never do this. Really, I can’t remember the last time I cried. It’s just that…oh, I don’t know, maybe because I haven’t heard from Casey yet…”
“Uh-huh.” Orson is biting his tongue so he doesn’t say, “I tried to warn you” or some other harshness.
“It’s been over three weeks. And CNN isn’t interested anymore and so I really can’t get any information about what’s happening over there…” Isabelle trails off, heaving a big sigh. And then she squares her shoulders. “This is all so pathetic. Every time I see you, I’m one big pathetic mess, which is really weird because in my family, I’m the one who always keeps everyone else going. My mother is usually the mess, although she’d die before she accepted that label, and I’m the one who gets her through whatever crisis is causing the uproar, and here I am dissolving into tears for no reason whatsoever. I am so sorry.”
And then there’s silence—Isabelle has run out of apology, and Orson has no idea what would be an appropriate response to her confession.
“Well,” he says finally, in order to move her up and out of the house, “here are the keys to the Jeep. I’m sure Casey would want you to have it.” And he stands, places the keys in her hand to indicate that now that she’s no longer dripping tears his intervention is over, but Isabelle isn’t getting up.
“How do you know Casey?”
And Orson sits back down. “Casey and my son went to school together, from preschool through high school.”
“You have a son?” Isabelle is stunned. Orson seems such a singular presence, it never occurred to her he had children, a wife. There’s no trace of either in his house.
“All grown now, same age as Casey. Luke lives in Detroit, where he is attempting to resurrect the downtown—a hopeless mission if there ever was one.” And then Orson adds, proud despite himself, “But that’s my son.”
“What was he like as a child?”
“Luke?”
“No, Casey.”
“Pretty much the way he is now, only smaller.”
And Isabelle laughs. “I can see that. I can definitely see a tinier Casey”—and she takes both hands and holds them about two feet apart—“behaving exactly as he behaves now.”
“Lots of energy,” Orson says, nodding.
“Happy if the sun was shining.”
“Yes. Whatever was in front of him was pretty much it.”
And Isabelle is silent. Then: “Not much good at long-term planning.”
“No. Not his strong suit.”
“Well,” she says as she stands and he does, as well, “that’s what I can help him with.” And she finds that she’s light-headed, dizzy, and she sits back down again.
“I’m sorry.” God, she must have said that ten times already to this nice man. “I’m a little light-headed. In fact, I haven’t felt well since Casey…” And then she stops herself, because she knows instantly what’s wrong. How could she have been so clueless? Of course it’s been crazy since Casey left, and she’s been worried about him and worried about where she was going to live and how she was going to pay for it all, but to completely skip over the missed period, even though she’s never been exactly regular so it wasn’t such a big deal, but still, the queasiness alone should have told her. Oh my God.
“I’m pregnant,” simply springs from her mouth before she can censor herself. Then, more slowly, with real wonder: “I just realized I must be pregnant.”
Orson sits back down for a second time. Obviously this girl isn’t leaving anytime soon.
“What a mess,” she says, and he would concur if it weren’t cruel to do so.
They look at each other, neither knowing exactly what to say now, Isabelle gradually coming into complete embarrassment. And with her face flushing red, she stands up again, car keys in hand, and makes for the door.
“Thank you,” she says as she crosses the living room. “I can’t thank you enough,” is lobbed over her shoulder as she reaches the front door, opens it, and is gone.
—
ISABELLE SITS ON HER TINY front porch and stares out at the stillness of Marston Street. Up and down the block are small two- and three-bedroom wooden houses similar to her own. The old maple trees planted at the curbs, probably when the houses were built seventy years ago, are huge and leafless in the December air. Christmas is less than two weeks away.
It’s the middle of the day. The kids who live on the street are in school, and it’s so quiet Isabelle can hear the occasional squeal of car brakes on College Avenue several blocks to the east and the faint music of a guitar trio that often positions itself outside the Rockridge Café, playing for change.
Stupid. Could you have done anything more stupid? The words run through her head in an endless loop. She knows it’s her mother’s voice accusing her—she hears the harsh tone and staccato cadence, exactly as if her mother were sitting beside her—but she has no defense. She agrees. She can’t think of anything more stupid.
And then comes her father’s sorrowful voice from one of their morning discussions on the
Long Island Railroad, when he fervently admonished her not to “live a life of regret.” “How do you avoid that?” she remembers asking him, and he responded, “Be careful.”
Well, she wasn’t. And now what? You can have this baby, she tells herself, or not. That’s the first choice she has to address, and she prepares herself for endless agonizing bouts of indecision which will tie her up in knots. But to her amazement, the “or not” of her choice seems like an impossibility. It is crystal clear to Isabelle that she will have this baby. No, she tells herself, she and Casey will have this baby.
That rock-solid belief is a revelation to her. Where did that certainty come from? She has no idea. Maybe pregnancy carries with it this gift of clarity. Maybe she’s gone slightly crazy. All she knows for sure is that it feels amazing to be so unequivocal.
“Well!” And she says this out loud to the quiet street, frankly astonished at herself.
Mrs. Hershfeld, dragging a wire shopping cart loaded with groceries behind her and smoking, as she always seems to be, hears the loud and self-satisfied “Well!” as she nears the bungalow and takes it as a greeting.
“Fanny Hershfeld,” she says from the bottom of the steps. She could climb them to be more neighborly, but it would kill her knees.
“Isabelle Rothman,” Isabelle says as she gets up and walks down the steps to shake Mrs. Hershfeld’s hand.
“Rothman,” the older woman says with a knowing nod. “Good. Things will be fine between us.”
Isabelle has no idea what she means and it shows on her face.
“The Jews—we know.” And with that Fanny turns, grabs her shopping cart, and slowly begins to maneuver the four stone steps to her front door.
“Here, let me help you.” And Isabelle easily carries the cart onto the porch. And then, she can’t resist: “What do we know, Mrs. Hershfeld?”
“More than most,” she says with a sage nod of her head. She bumps the cart into her open doorway, then turns to give Isabelle the rest of her wisdom. “The Safeway—may they rot in hell for the produce they put out.” And with that, Mrs. Hershfeld maneuvers herself and her groceries through the front door and closes it with a slam of her foot.
—
CASEY CALLS ISABELLE THE FRIDAY BEFORE Christmas from Subic Bay International Airport in the Philippines. She’s had well over a week to make some kind of sense of her new state. The first thing she did was call Deepti and make a doctor’s appointment and take Deepti with her to ask the questions she wouldn’t think to ask. And the doctor confirmed the pregnancy, even though Isabelle didn’t need any medical test to verify what she knew, absolutely, in her bones.
What she wasn’t sure of was how Casey would take the news. She realized that no matter how many hours they had spent together, no matter the whispered conversations that often took place as they lay naked in each other’s arms, no matter the complete and easy intimacy she felt between them, she had no idea what he was going to say. How could that be? She felt she knew with more certainty what Daniel would say if she told him than what Casey’s reaction would be.
When she thinks of Daniel now, she always pictures him in the messy kitchen of his rented house in Los Angeles, sitting at the large wooden table pushed against a wall, the way he was the day she took him the Philip Levine poems. Something changed that day for both of them, she believes, and it is that morning that she goes back to in her mind.
If she went to him there and told him she was pregnant, he would lean back in his chair, cross his arms against his broad chest, narrow his light-blue eyes, and appraise her, trying to discern how she felt about it. Then he would ask her, and she would tell him that she was terrified and excited and committed in a way she had never been before in her life to anything, except maybe her writing.
“What about your writing?” he would say. And she would reassure him that she wouldn’t give it up. That she would manage to do both—raise this child and continue to write. Lots of women did it. She could, as well.
“Hmmm,” he would say, coming forward and leaning his forearms on the table in front of him. “Hard to do.”
“Yes,” she would admit, “but I think I can.”
And then Daniel would smile and say, “Keep me posted,” and she would know that he was on her side, as she had felt from that day in the kitchen with the book of poems and his explanation that “what’s inside you is worthy enough to write about.” Such a powerful statement. Contained within it was the assurance that he had seen her essence and judged it worthy. What greater gift is there, except maybe his declaration that he would help her find a way to get the words on paper?
Why was she able to imagine Daniel’s reaction to the news so clearly, but not Casey’s? Was Casey the sort of person whose presence made all the difference and Daniel was not? How did that work? Why was her connection to Daniel still strong despite the months and months of absence and her connection to Casey, gone simply a matter of weeks, already feeling threadbare and thin?
Despite the questions Isabelle spends most of her days mulling over, when she hears Casey’s voice on the phone, her legs give out and she has to sit down. Simply the sound of his voice overwhelms her.
“Casey, oh, Casey, where are you?”
“In the airport, near Mindoro.”
“You’re coming home! Oh my God!”
“Well…not quite yet.”
And Isabelle is silent, flooded with disappointment. She has no idea what to say next.
“Isabelle, there’s a famine in South Sudan. Eight hundred thousand people are in danger of starvation. Can you imagine? In Bor, where I’m headed, a hundred people a day are dying—children first, of course, always, but the whole population, they’re walking skeletons.”
“That’s awful,” Isabelle manages to say, just barely.
“So you can understand why I’m not coming home just yet.” His voice is strong, urgent. She thinks she might detect some glee in it.
“Yes, but…Casey, there’s something else.”
“The World Food Program, that’s part of the United Nations, said that nowhere else in the world are people in such dire straits. The situation’s beyond a crisis. Global Hope’s got two planes loaded with food, basic stuff like powdered milk for the kids, beans and rice, essentials, and they’re on their way even as we speak, and I’m going to meet them on this dirt landing strip outside of—”
“Casey!” And Isabelle feels like a horrible person. Selfish. Superficial. Why is she making such a personal fuss when scores of people are dying? But she has to tell him. “Listen, there’s something we have to talk about.”
“Okay, shoot.”
And then Isabelle finds she can’t get the words out. She’s practiced this moment many times in her head over the past ten days, but now that she has to speak the words, she finds she can’t.
“Isabelle, what is it? They’re calling my flight.”
“When will you be back?” is what she is able to manage.
“Jeez, I don’t know. It depends on what we find when we get to the Sudan. And how much relief work they’ll let us do there. There’s a civil war going on, that’s a huge part of the trouble, and the government—”
“Casey, I’m pregnant.”
There’s an immediate black hole of silence, sucking out all of Isabelle’s hope, and then a very soft “Wow” from Casey.
“Is that a good wow or a bad one?”
“I’m just sort of shocked.”
“Me, too.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
“I’m having this baby.” Isabelle says this quietly, resolutely.
Casey says nothing. Isabelle can hear in the background, behind his silence, a muffled voice calling for passengers to board a plane, probably Casey’s.
“Shit, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you again. As soon as I can. All right?”
“Yes, but—”
“I love you.” And then there’s a dial tone.
CHAPTER TEN
By the time
Isabelle gives birth to her son in late July 1995, just days after her twenty-third birthday, Daniel is in Iowa. He doesn’t tell Isabelle about this move, and she doesn’t tell him about the baby. Since the summer of her graduation and his exile from Los Angeles, they have e-mailed each other only sporadically—their exchange of Christmas messages, an e-mail from Isabelle when she found Daniel’s third novel, long out of print, in a used-book store and he made her promise not to read it. But primarily Isabelle has been consumed with the life taking shape within her and Daniel has become more and more disgusted with himself and his vagabond existence, this begging for academic scraps and babysitting a son who refuses to grow up.
Isabelle names her son Avi, which means “my father” in Hebrew, a name carefully chosen. It is a talisman, one more way of tying Casey to a child he professes to love.
After their initial stunted conversation from Subic Bay Airport, Casey called a second time, when his plane landed in Khartoum. He had minutes before he had to board a much smaller plane, which would land on the dirt airstrip outside the town of Bor.
In this phone call, Casey sounds excited about the baby—that’s Isabelle’s sense of it, and her heart soars. He’s had time to think about her news on the plane ride, she decides, and he’s gotten over his shock and has come down on the side of excitement. She tells him her due date, July 21, and he promises to be home for the birth.
“But Casey, that’s seven months away. You’ll be back before that, right?”
There is a microsecond of hesitation and then Casey answers, “Sure. Probably. I should be. Once we finish giving out the foodstuffs here and see what else we can do, then I should be coming home.”
And Isabelle’s whole body relaxes into relief. She hears what she wants to hear: Casey is coming home. She can hold it together until that day.
Surprise Me Page 12
