by Tod Goldberg
Before I went back to the car, I made a pact with myself that I would never come back to this lake, would stop forcing myself to live in a state of suspended sorrow for a child I couldn’t save and a wife I never wanted to lose. I would learn to love Ginny as I knew she had begun to love me.
But now, as I slow Bruce Duper’s boat to a crawl a hundred yards from our dock, I understand that I was being foolish, that I was sick, that I am sick, that the only assurances I could make then was that my life had been unpredictable and would continue to be so. I’d made promises that I could never keep again.
I cut the engine and the boat coasts quietly into the slip, cutting through the water like a whisper, a memory, a shadow. I tie her in and jump out. Our old Whaler is sitting just as I found it, the Johnson engine shiny and new.
Of course it wasn’t a locksmith.
Molly probably mentioned to Bruce that the front door kept blowing open, that the latch was old and rusted, and couldn’t he help her out? Couldn’t he come out one afternoon and take a look at it?
Of course he could.
Molly didn’t love Bruce Duper, couldn’t have found him attractive, couldn’t have needed him for anything but convenience.
I’m not thinking straight.
She told me. She told me everything.
“Do you remember the day we bought this pile of junk?” I asked. I was standing on the dock, where I am now, staring at the boat, remembering our life on it. The boat had been waxed and the Evinrude looked clean. “How do you keep it running? I mean, I just don’t see you crawling around the engine. Do you have somebody who takes care of the old girl?”
“Paul,” she said, “let’s not do this now. It’s late and we’re both tired and this isn’t how I want to start everything out.”
“Then answer the question.”
She sighed, and then a shiver went through her. “It’s Bruce, okay? Does that make you happy? Does that satisfy you?”
“Why would he wax your boat?” I said. “Why would a friend do something like that? Friends don’t do things like that, Molly. Let’s get real.”
“Please, Paul,” she said.
“Do you love him, is that it?” Molly started walking back up to the house. “I’m talking to you,” I said. Molly stopped and then just grinned at me, as if I’d said something funny.
“Why did you even come here?”
“For Katrina,” I said.
“Then let’s not argue about a boat, okay?” She was still grinning. I wanted to run down the length of the dock and sweep her into my arms, place kisses over her mouth, her neck, down her chest and stomach. I wanted to dissolve into her, until we were one person.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I GO AROUND back and enter the cabin through the kitchen again, just as I did when Ginny and I first got here a few days ago. The kitchen is clean now and I see that Ginny has scrubbed the sink, mopped the floors, placed fresh flowers in the vase on the table. Stress causes Ginny to clean. When we first began dating, when she was afraid I would be fired for seeing her, when her parents were threatening to cut her off, Ginny came to my apartment and scoured every wall, vacuumed every floor, washed every article of my clothing.
I sit down at the table, and I try to concentrate, try to remember the tricks Dr. Loomis taught me back when I was a child. He told me to focus on the things that troubled me. He told me to break them down into tiny fragments, small enough to fit on the head of the pin, he said, and then separate them. “Imagine your fears are particles of dust,” he said. “Pinpoint each one individually and narrow your mind onto that minuscule piece. And then, Paul, then you can examine it. It is so small it cannot hurt you.”
I’m trying to reorder things. I’m trying to focus on myself, on my past without getting trampled up into it. I’m trying not to be afraid.
We are sitting at the kitchen table. It is still dark outside. Molly says to me, “Do you really believe that these were other children?”
“I do.”
“And they are ours?”
“Of course.”
“But how?”
“Creation is an exact science,” I say. “It was meant to be. It was our destiny. These are our two others, Molly.”
“I can’t believe that,” she says.
No. That isn’t how it happened. Molly never talked like that. It happened like this: I sat down at the kitchen table while Molly filled a kettle with water to boil for tea. I hadn’t been inside our home for over a year, hadn’t been this close to Molly for even longer.
“How often do you think of her?” Molly said. She was standing in front of the stovetop watching the blue flames beneath the kettle.
“Every day,” I said.
“Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said. “She possesses me, Molly. I don’t think I can keep living this over and over again.”
“Are you seeing a doctor?”
“Yes,” I lied.
Molly nodded her head and then closed her eyes. “That’s not true, is it?”
“It is true,” I said.
“I’m seeing someone now,” she said. “It’s helped, Paul. It really has. I mean, beyond medication and just talking, it’s really made me understand why we didn’t work out and why we felt the need to let Katrina fight for herself.”
“That’s good for you,” I said.
“You have to learn to put your trust in something else, that’s all.” She smiled at me. “I’m wondering how it is that you got here tonight. How we got here tonight. Do you feel guilty, Paul?”
“I want to,” I said, and that was the truth. “Sometimes it’s almost like it never happened. Like I was never here.”
“You can’t just keep blacking things out,” Molly said. “I found that out. Painting has helped. Do you have a hobby, Paul? Do you have anything besides yourself?”
“I’m dating a girl,” I said. “She’s young. Nineteen. It’s dumb. She’s just a replacement.”
“For me or for Katrina?” Molly wasn’t looking at me anymore. She’d gone to the pantry and was rifling through it, as though we weren’t even speaking. There was no emotion in her. I thought perhaps she’d finally figured out how to disconnect herself. “I guess that’s not fair to ask,” she said. “Forget I said anything. Let’s just concentrate on the future. I haven’t forgotten anything, couldn’t if I wanted to. But I’m only interested in the future now. After this weekend it’s all about tomorrow. Don’t you think that’s the best?”
“We did a horrible thing, Molly,” I said. “That’s the thing I keep coming back to. We could have saved her if we’d really tried. Do you know what I think? I think I deserve to die for what I’ve done. All the children we’ve let die, all the chances we had to make a difference and all we’re left with is … carcasses. Shells. Just tissue. I never made a difference.”
Molly suddenly turned and looked at the back door, as if she thought someone was trying to burst through it, or that someone was going to come and knock on it, rescue her from this moment. But there was no one out there, of course, and Molly quickly turned back to me. Her face was pale.
“I feel like I’m coming down with something,” she said.
“Molly,” I said.
“I get a pain in my ears,” she said. “It feels like something is trying to wiggle out. Have you ever gotten that? It’s nothing, I’m sure.”
“I brought the pictures back with me,” I said. “I want you to see them. I want you to understand what I’m talking about. I’ve studied them. Those tumors were children, Molly. Do you understand that?”
“I’m not hearing you,” she said. “It makes no sense.”
“I’ll show you,” I said. “We’ll sketch them out. And I’ll take them back with me to Los Angeles and I’ll submit them to a journal or a magazine or to a university. We can help other people with this.”
Molly said then, very calmly, “They’re going to arrest us, Paul. Eventually we’ll be arrested for letting h
er die out here. Some new sheriff will take over, will see what we did, and we’ll go to jail.”
“I still love you,” I said. “Do you know that?”
“You shouldn’t,” Molly said. “That’s what I know. And I also know that we’ve both had lapses—maybe you don’t see it like I do now, but that’s what I think they were—lapses. Because we were normal for a while, weren’t we? Didn’t we have picnics and didn’t we make love and didn’t we celebrate holidays? We did, didn’t we?”
“I’m not sure it matters,” I said.
“Do you ever wonder when it’s all going to run up behind us? When the avalanche is going to catch us?” Molly sat down across from me and for a moment I thought I might just get up and leave, that coming back again, seeing Molly again, was a mistake. But then she took my hands in hers and held them, stroking my wrist. “How did I get so sick? Tell me, Paul, how did I stop caring about our baby?”
“It’s a disease,” I said. “You couldn’t control it.”
“That’s not right,” she said. “We went crazy. We did. But from what? I can’t even look at my paintings from then. It’s like I was another person entirely.”
“You were,” I said. “We were.”
“I guess I would like to see the pictures again,” she said. “It’s so clinical, though. There’s not even a piece of her left in them. It won’t hurt me to see them, will it?”
“No,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Just get them, then.”
Before I’d even reached the guest room, where my bags were, where the autopsy photos were, I could already hear Molly crying.
THERE IS A place inside my head that holds all of my memories about Katrina, about Molly, and about the last month. It has closed itself, it seems, to protect me. I knew before I left for Granite Lake that I needed to lie to Ginny about where I was going. Or, rather, wasn’t going. The day before I left, I told her that I needed to grade papers all weekend, that I’d probably just sit in my apartment with the stereo on reading my work. I told her to call me and we could talk, but that I knew I wouldn’t be able to go out. She was fine with everything.
“We’ll go out next weekend,” Ginny said. “Maybe we can go to a nice dinner in Hollywood at some place where I can see some stars.”
“Sure,” I said.
“And besides,” she said, “I really need to be working on my screenplay this weekend anyway.”
Before I left town, I had all my calls forwarded to my cell phone. Ginny would never know where I was.
Now, I think about what I must have known was going to happen.
I run my hands over the kitchen table and imagine that Molly is sitting across from me again. Would I do the same things? Would I say the same words? Even though so much time had elapsed since Katrina died, and even though Molly seemed well, or better at least, I should have known that I was her enabler, that I was the spark that always ignited her.
“Damn it,” I say and am surprised by my voice.
I close my eyes and Molly is there. I can smell her. I can taste her lips. She is beside me, she is in front of me, she is inside me. I reach out to touch her. Her voice says, “You saved me.”
I’ve never saved anything, I say.
It’s true, her voice says, if you hadn’t come here, I might never have had the courage.
You always had courage, I say.
You gave it to me, her voice says. I know you used to come out here and watch me. I know you’ve seen things that you regret seeing, but none of that matters now. We’ve come to a very important place in our relationship. You caught the avalanche, Paul.
I listen to Molly telling me the truth. When I open my eyes, the sun has begun to peek through the blinds. It is five eleven in the morning. I’ve been asleep, dreaming of a ghost.
THE TRUTH: CASES of fetus in fetu are terribly rare. The oldest noted cases are often described as a replication of the birth of Eve from the rib of Adam. Yet, a baby boy born in England in the sixteenth century with a tumor consisting of an eye, molar teeth, and fragments of bone was burned in a public square and condemned as the work of the devil. His mother was stoned to death. In 1974, at a dig in Pakistan, anthropologists unearthed a series of near complete Neanderthal fossils. In the pelvic sac of the smallest male were the remains of a tumor roughly a quarter the size of a human fist. It contained what was determined to be two small fingers and the ball-and-socket joint of a shoulder.
The first tumors doctors found in Katrina were small and contained amounts of what they considered non-lethal fluids and substances. “They are simple anomalies,” the first doctor said. His name was Vasquez. “Dermoid cysts are, at most, troublesome, often painful, but they can be removed and rarely return. Really, Mr. Luden, the care you give your child is no different because of these. Katrina is very special and these cysts will probably stop occurring by the time she is three.”
So we brought her home, back to the lake, and she grew like any child, and once every three weeks I brought her back to the doctor. And once every three weeks Dr. Vasquez said, “This should really stop occurring. That said, it is strictly an annoyance. If you would like, we can keep her here for observation.”
“No,” I said. “She’s just a baby.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Nothing to be concerned with.”
Katrina never cried much, and I think that is a testament to her strength. She wanted to live; I know that. Even when the tumors started attacking her brain, she acted no differently. But that isn’t so odd. Brain tumors can be the most pleasant of all killers, the victims rarely knowing that they are dying until they are dead.
Finally, three months before she died, the doctors in Granite City called in a specialist from Seattle. His name was Dr. Sigal. He was tall and thin and fiddled with a pen as he spoke to us. We were sitting in the waiting room at the Granite City clinic with Katrina asleep across Molly’s lap.
“It is difficult for me to explain this to you,” Dr. Sigal said, “because I’ve never dealt extensively with this sort of thing in a child. I believe the recurring tumors in your daughter’s abdomen are teratomas, not malignant mind you, but of an odd makeup. They don’t seem to be made of the typical masses, yet exhibit many of the same properties.”
“What are you saying?” Molly said.
“I think your daughter is dying,” he said flatly. “She’s being eaten from the inside by these tumors. They’re sucking protein from her and diverting oxygen. It is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. It deserves proper study.”
“She’s not a guinea pig,” I said.
“She is remarkable,” Dr. Sigal said. “Katrina should never have survived childbirth. Science needs her, Mr. Luden, you must understand that.”
“I want to go home,” Molly said.
“The only thing I know is that my child is not going to be hooked up to a bunch of machines,” I said.
“It’s her best chance,” Dr. Sigal said.
“I think I’m coming down with something,” Molly said.
“What percentage do you give her, Doctor? Five? Ten?” I paused as Katrina stretched one arm out, swallowed, and then turned on her side. “Can you quantify the chance my daughter has to live versus your chance to get into a textbook?”
“You don’t know the first thing about science,” Dr. Sigal said. “This is a landmark. I’ll do everything in my power to secure your daughter the finest physicians. We can make her very comfortable. And of course you’d be compensated.”
I’d spent so many hours in hospital waiting rooms determining the fate of my children. I’d spent years of my life talking to doctors who swore they could fix everything: Dr. Loomis, Dr. Plinkton, and now Dr. Sigal. I wanted to grab Katrina and sprint out of the office, run down the highway, run all the way to the coast and dive into the Pacific. We could swim with the outgoing tide, our bodies lifted along the crest of the waves, floating and floating, the sun bright and shining and we would be gone from here and we would be home, fina
lly, home.
“I’m taking my family home,” I said.
“She won’t live without medical attention,” Dr. Sigal said.
“She won’t live with it,” I said.
Dr. Sigal started to say something then paused. There was nothing he could say.
We took Katrina home and Molly put her down on the bed in our bedroom, where I am sitting now. I’m holding the manila envelope filled with my daughter. I open the clasp and pull out two glossy eight-by-tens of the tumor the doctors found in Katrina’s brain.
I want to close my eyes again, so that I can hear Molly, but instead I just focus on the tumors, remembering, modifying, visualizing.
I’d walked into the guestroom, where my bags were, and gathered up all of the documents relating to Katrina’s death, the photos, the diagrams, the theories, what amounted to the truth. The pathologists in Granite City had provided me with the pictures they took of Katrina and the results of the tests they’d done of her. The autopsy stated that Katrina “a two-year-old female, died as a result of a tumor on the base of her medulla oblongata.” Signed, sealed, delivered, Katrina’s life summed up in one sentence. I’d collected hundreds of pages of documents relating to the masses found in my daughter, had completed complex diagrams that outlined the process by which the tumors were diverting proteins, had outlined several areas of study regarding the historical and anthropological significance of our daughter.
I’d broken Katrina down into a science. I knew her every pore. I knew the probability within 1.7 percent of a child born to two manic-depressives to suffer physiological or psychological abnormalities. Molly and I were going to finally get down to the science of our child’s death. We were going to celebrate what I’d always known: That nothing could save her from life. We’d enabled a disaster.
