by Sally Koslow
As I glance at my watch, a low voice shouts out my name. I look up and see my host Nat with a leash in his hand that leads to a black standard poodle so elderly its face has turned white. “You made it.”
“Wonderful party,” I mouth over the singing.
“Great to see you—hope you’ve gotten something to eat,” Nat says, then joins the singing, shaking the dog’s leash as if it were a maraca.
From here, the pianist goes to “Only the Good Die Young,” the song I was afraid he might play. I feel myself stiffen. This, I decide, is my cue to leave. I turn to Nat, salute him with my empty glass, and say, “I better go—but thanks for everything”
“But you’ll miss the fireworks—and they’re the point.”
The pianist tilts his head toward Nat. “Duet?” he says.
“You got it,” Nat answers, and slides next to the younger man, handing me the leash. “But not this,” Nat says, and begins “Through the Years,” which the crowd breaks into with gusto.
Ben sang this to me at our twentieth anniversary party. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, I tell myself. The dog drops her body down to the floor with a sigh and I’d like to do the same. When the song is over, Nat returns to my side.
“You can sing,” I say, and find a smile that I believe will pass for genuine.
“Desperate measure to make a lady stick around.”
I am trying to think of a response when I hear the ping of my phone. It’s Nicola, I’m guessing, with New Year’s greetings. She and Luey used to call from wherever they were; I guess it’s come to this, a text. I find the phone but can’t see the small print without my glasses, which I’ve left at home. I don’t have a choice and hand Nat the phone. “Could you read this for me, please?”
“Pleasure,” he says, squinting into the phone. When he looks up, his face has darkened. “It’s from someone name Lou who’s in the hospital and wants you to call ASAP.”
“No! It’s my—never mind. I better call back.” I do, trying to make out what Luey’s is saying through the din, though all I can know for sure is the name of the hospital, and shout, “I’ll be there as fast as I can!”
Nat hears me, and in a scramble, helps me find my coat on the rack, moving with efficiency and asking no questions beyond wondering which coat is mine. Outside, he hails a taxi and I clamber into it. As it pulls away from the curb and I call Luey, he waves. Minutes later, the sky explodes with the colors I see when I have a migraine. The pow of the fireworks matches the thunderclap of my heart.
19.
I push back the curtain in the ER and Luey shouts “Mommy!” in a voice of an eleven-year-old. I am relieved yet terrified. Mascara has run down my daughter’s cheeks; she resembles an exhausted mime. Her party clothes are heaped on a plastic chair, though the tulle skirt has fallen on the linoleum floor. As I cover her legs with a thin blanket, I see that the sheet below is stained with blood.
“Sweetie, what happened?” I am remembering my own hospital visits before we adopted Nicola.
Gulps and tears meet my question. “I . . . can’t talk.” An animal keening interrupts each word. I pull Luey’s shivering body toward me and pat her matted hair, the same way I had done less than two months ago, when she took the red-eye home the morning after Ben died, arriving in the colorless dawn. The preceding evening, Daniel had put me to bed with a fusty hot water bottle, which he magically produced along with a sleeping pill. At four-thirty in the morning, I woke up to take a second pill he’d left by my bedside, but in my blur I reached for Luey, who crawled under the covers fully dressed. We slept until past ten that morning. When Nicola tiptoed into the room and found us, we became three women joined in grief.
“When I got to the bathroom, there was all this . . . .” She points beneath her. Again, sobs.
A miscarriage is never a blessed event, but I see tonight’s drama as a merciful conclusion to the latest turn in the biopic of Luey, child-woman, feckless female, and, apparently, birth control abstainer. God, in his infinite wisdom, giveth and God taketh away. Maybe He hath recognized that Louisa Silver-Waltz is as ready to be someone’s mother as I am of giving another human being financial—and possibly equally misguided, marital—advice.
“Don’t talk, honey,” I say, and continue the rocking motion. I will be grateful if Luey doesn’t speak, because I won’t know what to say, but she whispers, “Mom, I’m scared.”
Me, too. “Hospitals are always scary.” I know this isn’t what she needs. “No one wants to be here. Try to sleep.” I attempt to quiet her moans with a shush-shush that emanates courtesy of some backup generator of maternal response.
“You’re wearing your good perfume,” Luey murmurs as she closes her eyes. “Where were you tonight?”
“Nowhere,” I say. “Not important. Sleep. Luey. Sleep.” After a few minutes her hand releases the blanket that she had clasped tightly. I gentle her onto the bed and speed-walk to the public area of the emergency room to find whoever is in charge.
I may as well be in a mosh pit. Every bed is filled. Hovering outside each one are boisterous groups that bump into one another. I stand as still as a hoary old beagle, trying to make myself invisible while I catch a scent, but if someone is directing this chaos, I detect nothing.
A woman in a smock silly with candy canes scurries by, clipboard in hand. “Excuse me,” I sputter, but she races to the end of the room, escaping into a tiny glass-walled office. I follow her, stand outside, and glare as she speaks on the phone. Am I being rude? So what? I’m a mother doing her job. When the woman gets off the phone, she catches my eye and leaves the enclosure.
“Yes?” she asks, as I rush toward her.
“Can you please tell me what’s going on with Louisa Silver-Waltz, the girl at the end?” I point toward her cubicle.
The woman, thickset with many small gold earrings and dark waves caught in a butterfly barrette, checks her clipboard. “And you are?”
“Her mother.”
She flips back a form and reads without looking up. “Your daughter is past twenty-one. I’m not allowed to reveal any information without her consent. You know, HIPAA laws.” She hesitates and meets my abject gaze. “If you wait by your daughter’s bed, a doctor will be by.” She has the grace to add, “I’m sorry.”
I sense that she is. Back by Luey’s side, I fold her ruined finery piled on the floor next to the plastic chair, where I sit, shifting my hips in a futile attempt to find comfort. While I wait I rest my eyes and evidently I doze, because I startle to Luey’s voice.
“Mother,” she’s whispering hoarsely. “Can I have some water, please?”
Spittle has run from the corner of her mouth. I lean toward her, wipe it away, and wince. An ogre has made a grab for my neck, but I manage to say, “Of course, honey,” and stand. “I’ll find some,” I add, because not only is there no pitcher of water next to the bed, there is no glass and no sink.
I check my watch. It’s past three a.m. The ER no longer resembles a balloon ready to burst. Before I go searching for water, I walk to the glass booth, where a thin young Indian or Pakistani man with wire-framed glasses has replaced the dark-haired woman. When he sees me approach, he slides open a panel. “May I help you?” he asks, leaning forward.
“My daughter is Louisa Silver-Waltz, in the bed at the end. I’d like some information, please. She was brought in earlier tonight. She lost her baby.”
“Let me check,” he says. He thumbs through a stack of papers. “Ah, yes,” he clucks. “She’ll be examined again first thing in the morning.”
And so we wait. I walk Luey to the bathroom. Her hair is sticking to her forehead, and I don’t need a mirror to know I can’t look much better. I would barter my watch for a breath mint and suddenly a headache is levitating my scalp. If I don’t have a cup of coffee, I will pass out.
“Lu,” I say. “Hungry?”
She
groans, dramatically. “I suppose.”
“That settles it. Hold on—I’ll be back soon.” I leave the ER, weave through serpentine halls the chartreuse of a sinus infection, wait and wait for an elevator, push through a set of doors that appears to be designed to defend against nuclear waste, find the cafeteria, and buy two coffees along with a hermetically sealed cinnamon bun, most likely stale. I find my way back to the ER and enter just as a tall young man wearing a lab coat and a stethoscope is leaving Luey’s bedside. I nab him before he disappears behind the next curtain.
“Excuse me. Can you tell me what’s going on with my daughter?”
“Certainly,” he says. “I’m Dr. Pandit.” So young he has acne, he looks ready to shake my hand, were I not carrying a cardboard tray. “You have nothing to worry about. Your daughter is fine.”
My heart is a drumbeat. “Doctor, I am aware that my daughter was pregnant.”
“You can relax.” He draws a deep breath and smiles. “Your daughter hasn’t lost the baby . . . at least not yet.”
I stare at him, harebrained.
“I’ve recommended bed rest. The next forty-eight hours will be crucial, but there’s quite possibly good news ahead.”
He grasps my arm, as if shaking me awake. “Relax. Grandma,” he says. “I’m fairly sure the worst is over.” He pulls away. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . . .”
I’d like to find a chapel and have a word with God, but not because Doogie Howser here has promoted me a generation. I feel a landslide of guilt for being dumbstruck by this news when another mother might rejoice. But there it is. I cannot even count the reasons, rational and not, why this pregnancy fills me with dread. I am paralyzed, and if when I leave this hospital, I should see a street lined with red-faced placard-carriers hissing my name, reviling me for my irreverence toward human life, so be it.
“Mother, vamanos,” Luey says, however, pushing back the curtain. Her tights are ripped but her face looks gloriously relieved, as the ill and injured are when discharged from a hospital. “You ready to roll? We’re outta here.”
But we aren’t. It takes more than an hour for paperwork to be executed. Only then do we leave, and after twenty minutes in the deserted streets finally manage to hail a taxi. Although its windows are cracked open to the cold, the vehicle reeks of last night’s vomit. I lean back, again aware of the literal pain in my neck, and close my eyes. I pray for strength and a sense of humor.
Luey and I have just enough money to cover the fare. When I open the door to the apartment, Sadie greets me with gusto while my daughter heads for the couch, kicks off her four-inch platform heels and collapses. “Shit,” she says. “It’s good to be home.”
“Go rest,” I say. It is a command, and I am grateful that Camille Waltz’s titanium tone has come to my defense.
Slowly, Luey pushes herself up from the couch and makes her way down the hall, leaving garments in her wake. After she disappears into her bedroom, I gather each piece of clothing, head for the back hall, and deposit the heap in the garbage. I give Sadie a serviceable walk and then, without even washing my face—for me, a stress sign as blatant as hives—strip off my clothes, throw on a T-shirt, and burrow under my covers.
It could be noon or it could be four when a voice sings out, “Anybody home?” I am mid-dream, screeching at Ben for winding up in an Iraqi jail because he neglected to pay taxes throughout our whole marriage. This reminds me that, for the first time, I will need to complete my returns single-handedly, which sends me straight to the thought that tomorrow is a workday. Wally should be back and hot on the trail of my worldly assets, leading to an ice cream sundae of money with a ring on top.
“Happy New Year!” Nicola trills as she knocks on my door.
“Nicola . . . c’mon in,” I say.
Her gleaming black hair is smoothly braided, hanging down her back. She is dressed in a narrow rose satin tunic, her legs in tight jeans tucked into narrow leather boots that reach her knees. My older daughter resembles an elegant branch of quince.
“Napping?” she asks.
“Long story.” I stifle a groan. “How was Boston?” I pat the bed next to me. “Tell me everything.”
I need a dose of normal, a daughter reporting prosaic details—who she saw and kissed, what she ate and wore, where she danced and slept, and why she’s very glad to be home. Which is exactly what I hear for a good ten minutes. If anyone demanded that I repeat the particulars, I would fail, but having Cola next to me is like listening to a mixed tape of beloved show tunes.
“Where’s Luey?” she asks when she’s finished with her headlines.
“Sleeping.”
“Not anymore,” Luey says, joining us. She is wearing one of my robes. Her hair is freshly washed, hanging in tousles. She smells like citrus and almonds. “Happy New Year, sister.” Luey grabs Nicola in a tight embrace that I see less often than I wish.
“Back at you, “Nicola says. “How was your night?”
“Big and ugly.”
“Do tell.”
“Not now.”
“How about you?” Nicola pivots toward me.
“You’d have been proud. I went to the party given by the broker and his friend.”
“The smokin’ broker,” Luey says in a droll voice that she didn’t bring to the hospital. “And his boyfriend.”
“Stepbrother, as it turns out.”
“Did you mingle with the beautiful and the damned?” Nicola asks.
I present Harriet Ross and the bald slut as exhibits A and B.
“Did you know anyone?” Luey asks.
“Not a soul except the hosts”—whom I know barely.
“I love a party when I know no one,” Luey says.
I hope she knows the father of her child.
“I’m starving,” Nicola says. “How does pizza sound?”
Like a beautiful Band-Aid for our problems. “If you’re cooking, I’m helping. Luey?” Again, an order.
The three of us improvise, grating cheese, rolling dough, slicing, dicing, and perfecting. We do pizza well. Thirty minutes later I’ve busted out the Wedgewood that’s mid-auction on eBay, courtesy of Luey, getting bid up by hopeful brides. I light some half burnt candles and we sit. If I were a more traditionally religious woman, I would repeat the prayer in my mind: Thank you, God, for keeping my daughters safe and healthy. Grant us a new year of peace.
Nicola produces a bottle of Chianti. She pours one glass, then a second, and is onto the third when Luey intercepts. “Nothing for me,” she says.
“Hung over?” Nicola asks.
Luey places her hand on her stomach. “No, Cola. Pregnant.”
Cola groans. “Jesus, who put you in charge of bad jokes?”
“Point taken,” Luey says. My daughters simply stare at each other for a moment too long, in a silence—not a good silence—I am desperate to shatter.
“Say, do either of you know a Clementine DeAngelo?” I ask.
Now I have their attention.
20.
“What’s up with Clementine?” Nicola asked. She could picture Clementine, with cheekbones jutting like parentheses while her own appeared to be merely embossed. If the girl got a decent haircut, she could model, she’d thought.
“She sent her condolences. I ran into her in the country,” her mother said.
At one of the bonfires, where Clem—Nicola had heard her called that—was with the farm-stand guy, Nicola had tried to talk to her. As the conversation choked, Nicola couldn’t believe she was the same person she’d seen her father goofing with the previous day when Clementine had checked their car’s sticker at the beach parking lot.
Her dad could talk—or flirt, if she was being technical—with anyone, another of his gifts, like being able to recite the states in alphabetical order. While most daughters might have been embarrassed by this behavior, N
icola felt proud, as if Ben Silver had his own gravitational force that no woman could resist, even if she was Nicola’s camp counselor. Nana was particularly susceptible, though half the time she started it. Her father flirted better than any man her own age.
“I’m impressed that Clementine spoke to you,” Nicola said to her mother. “I’ve never heard her get out a full sentence. Maybe you caught her when she’d taken a Xanax.” Nicola regretted that she’d aimed for humor and landed on malice, sounding small.
“I’ve never had a problem,” Luey said. “She’s just shy.”
Is there anything you can’t do? Nicola was tempted to say, but the look on her mother’s face—sad and perplexed—stopped her. Nicola switched to the top item on her mind.
“I ran into Michael T. Kim in Boston.” Chased after? Slept with? No matter.
“The boy who took you to the prom, that Michael?” Her mother’s face is flushed with curiosity.
“The big brain who dumped you?” Luey asked.
“I dumped him.” That was how Nicola remembered it.
“What was he doing in Boston?” her mother and sister asked in nosy harmony.
“Harvard med school—”
“You could have called that one ten years ago,” Luey said.
“—and throwing a party.”
“Kegger?” Luey asked.
“Catered. With enough profiteroles for a hundred more guests.” Already, she was feeling defensive on Michael T’s behalf.
“Did you have fun?” Her mother’s dependable investigative opener.
Exposing herself in front of Luey was generally an act of masochism, but after a moment’s debate, she decided to live on the edge. “I did,” she admitted.
