by Mira Ptacin
Earlier today, before picking up Grace, I drank wine out of a urine cup. It was just a few sips. We were leaving Phillips Family Practice, about to leave the examination room, when Andrew busted out a half-full bottle of wine and suggested we polish it off, that we have a toast. We weren’t celebrating the abortion; we were celebrating the end of our trips to Phillips Family Practice. We were not celebrating the end of the pregnancy, the end of the procedures, or the prodding of my uterus. We were celebrating our marriage. “To a new life,” Andrew said.
I didn’t expect the toast. Dr. Reich finished the checkup, explained how long the common physical aftereffects of this trauma to the uterus and the body might last, how much longer it would be until my breasts stopped lactating completely, how I should be wearing frozen cabbage in my bra and why, how much longer before my regular menstrual cycle would start back up again, and told me that it’d be totally fine for me to have sex with Andrew again—not that I’d be eager to acknowledge that I was a sexual being anytime soon. In fact, that’s what Danya said. “How the hell you’d want to think about sex, I’m not sure. But whenever you’re ready, now ya know.” She congratulated us on our one-month wedding anniversary. She said she hoped everything would be normal for us, that we would have a normal, uneventful next few years, and wished us good luck.
That’s when, all of a sudden, Andrew slipped a bottle of red wine out from his messenger bag. He took three (unused) plastic urine sample cups, poured a few sips into each one, and the three of us shared a toast. To our new marriage. To the new life we were starting together. Then, Andrew suggested we toast again, this time to the baby. “To a little girl who never had a chance,” Andrew said, and I tightened up. I don’t know why, but it didn’t feel right. Almost like he was making a joke of it. Like he was teasing Lilly. “To Lilly, that she may rest in peace,” I saluted, but that didn’t feel right or real, either. It didn’t feel like any kind of closure, if that’s what we were going for. Our daughter. I hadn’t even begun to wrap my head around that word, or anything that had just happened, for that matter. I just didn’t know what to think, other than I never wanted to go back to Phillips Family Practice ever again. All I wanted to do was step out and leave my grief and sadness in the examination room where it had started. But stepping out of Phillips Family Practice, I still felt as afraid and as vulnerable as I had when I stepped in six months ago.
Then, I went to go get Grace.
I’m trying to be a good woman. I’m trying to be a good wife. I owe Andrew a good wife—he’s done his best. I want to be normal and productive and useful; I want to catch up with everyone else. I’m trying to be pragmatic and organized and in control of all my things. Sometimes I change the date on my homework so my professors don’t think I procrastinate. Sometimes, if all the plates are spinning, I have time to write. I do this at the table where we eat our meals, right above our bedroom. There are two windows next to the table. They are very large, but give us very little natural light. We only get the reflected light and shadows from the elementary school next door. Outside, below the window, I see Segundo. He has strapped a leaf blower to his back and is stirring up the leaves, napkins, wrappers, and dust from the alley between our building and P.S. 116. Yesterday, Segundo turned on the heat in the building. We have no way of controlling the temperature. I open the window. Dirt and dust sneak through the window, spread and settle on pots, pans, my shoes, the furniture.
I open my computer, I try to clear my mind and write, but I’m thinking about Grace and feel I should check in on her. She’s been home for a few hours. She’s probably sleeping it off. I’d rather not call. I’d rather email; for some reason I think it’s safer. I don’t want to bombard her. Maybe she’s not ready to open herself up yet. Maybe she doesn’t need my support right now. But I’m feeling bad about things. I feel sorry for her. I’m worried about her. Does she have anyone to help her? Is there something I could be doing for her right now? I’m thinking of the future here, wondering what the likelihood is that an event like hers today could transmit trauma further down the road. I’m wondering if this is okay. Should I be providing her more comfort, more than her bed and DVDs are right now? When she left the fertility clinic this afternoon and the cab whisked her away to Brooklyn, when it flew over the Manhattan bridge, darting in between other drivers and zipping past face after face after face, and finally screeched to a halt and deposited her on the sidewalk in her gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, was she too raw?
I hear the front door click and Maybe hops to her feet, runs to the door barking and wagging her tail. It’s only 7:20.
“What are you doing home so early?” I ask, and Andrew looks at me with an expression reflecting the implication of what I just said, and I’m sorry.
“Maybe is practicing her h sounds,” I explain. I’m trying to create conversation. Something neutral. Andrew breathes out through his nose, “Hmmh,” not looking up from the carrot-covered cutting board as he chops veggies for our dinner. He’s a little afraid of me. He said this. That I’m like a ticking time bomb. I explode when he tries to touch me.
There’s a saying in Savannah that goes like this: “Naked is when you have no clothes on. Neked is when you have no clothes on and you’re up to no good.” Maybe and I are over on the couch. Her collar is off, all chewed up, and she’s totally neked. Hhhehh, hhhehh, she whisper-barks, then clamps her rice-teeth down into the skin of my knuckles. We are pack animals. Hhhehh, hhhehh. I echo her tease and a shudder of recognition passes through us. It’s times like these when we realize each other. We are wild domestics. Me: woman. Maybe: canine. I imagine that this new home of hers is a giant board game. I imagine that to a spirited pup like Maybe, growing up in a metal crate on a dirt floor was no good. I imagine that sprouting into a burrito-sized dog at the no-kill shelter in Anna, Illinois, wasn’t the best coming-of-age. I imagine if she could’ve talked to me then, smooshed would’ve been her first word. Within the walls of our apartment, the dog and I play games like “chase me” and “put ’er dere, put ’er dere.”
Chutes and Ladders. Life-size Candy Land. A labyrinthine puzzle to be taken apart. It must be irresistible to you, this apartment of ours. You do, after all, have Jack Russell in your blood. You spend your lonesome dog days chewing and prodding about. I know, because I’ve seen you. On my lonesome dog days, I watch you bury rawhide treat-treats in the nooks and the mouse holes. On my lonesome dog days, this home has the charm and dimensions of a bomb shelter. Oh my dog, has it ever occurred to you that, as a four-legged creature, you are forever in the push-up position? I read somewhere that a young girl rescued a dog and taught it to walk on its hind legs, like a person. A year later, it learned how to smoke. Don’t evolve any more, Maybe. Nowadays, I consider it to be dangerous. They say dogs are direct descendants of wolves, obedient to their instincts—eating, sleeping, following the pack. I have never seen you get angry. So on second thought, perhaps your first word wouldn’t be smooshed. Perhaps it would be How do you say . . . no hard feelings?
Pack mentality. Obedient to instincts. The rawhides you’ve buried about like Easter eggs are starting to attract ants. Even though you believe they’re covered by the invisible soil you shoveled with your snout, I still land directly onto a dried pig ear jerky when I drop my head onto the pillow at night.
The floor to the left of our bed mumbles from the movement of a giant, steel centipede: beneath us, the Long Island Railroad is taking commuters to their jobs. Slowly, the few cars on the street will be replaced by traffic. Two more hours until parents drop off their children at the playground of P.S. 116; for two more hours I can sleep. Above us, the radiator hisses. We’ve opened all the windows in the apartment and have a fan on in our bedroom, blowing onto our bed. It will be left on every night until spring comes, when Segundo turns off the heat and our bedroom cools down. In the winter, the snow turns our street into a wilderness. In a couple of months or less, flakes will fall from the sky and cover up
all the dirty bits and pieces that make up our block and, for a couple of hours, everything will be illuminated and beautiful. Then, all the snow will turn brown and slushy and it won’t be easy to go on bike rides. Two more months until December, two more hours of sleep.
I flip my pillow over to feel the cool side of it on my cheek. Andrew’s back is turned to me; it’s ivory and soft and smooth and smells like dried sweat, like sweet corn. Six and a half hours ago, we did it. We had sex—a small victory. I’m still afraid to do it, to activate the thing that got me here in the first place. I don’t want to get pregnant. I’m waiting for my trust to come back. I’m waiting to regain my ability to control things. Like my body. And I’m still a little afraid that I’m damaged, that my insides might fall out. Six hours ago, I let go of my fears as much as I could, tried to ignore my made-up fears. Next time, maybe I’ll say something. I’ll tell Andrew that I’m not ready. Because I love him, and we’re supposed to communicate. This is what married couples are supposed to do. Everyone says, “Marriage takes work.” I am working on this—communicating, talking about it, pushing past my comfort zone. Less afraid my body. I see its flaws. I want to find it as perfect as my husband does. It’s still so unfamiliar to me, and twenty pounds heavier. The weight from the pregnancy, and the ice cream. It’s like a reminder of what never came, and I want it to go away. Nothing fits except the maternity clothing. Andrew finds it amazing. I want to love my body again. Hold my head high, shoulders back, move my arms around, take long strides, smile. I want to wear colorful clothing, accessorize, and I want to wear a tiny bikini when we take a vacation in February and visit the beaches of Puerto Rico for Valentine’s Day. I love how the women there flaunt their curves. They’re proud of their bodies. They show it. They own it.
I can get used to the dog being in the room—Maybe just chews on a bone, probably thinking she should be doing something productive. She’s part terrier. But I get distracted by thoughts of Segundo. I wonder if Segundo knows when we do it. I wonder if Segundo isn’t just listening in on our carnal grunts; maybe he is much more clever than we suspect. Maybe he has drilled a hole into the bedroom wall by our closet. Maybe he peeks in on us. A spectator of our sex life. Or perhaps Segundo has been a witness to even more than just our sex life. Maybe he has followed the entire story that followed the sex, the story of what has happened inside our bedroom, our kitchen, the walls of our apartment, from the very beginning of us up until now.
Maybe I should find out. Tear down the barriers. Maybe I should get to know the man, or at least visit him every once in a while like Andrew does. The next occasion: Christmas. When Christmastime arrives, I will join my husband when he delivers Segundo’s gift—an expensive bottle of Caribbean rum. Maybe I’ll go downstairs with Andrew and finally see Segundo’s apartment, finally get a look at what’s going on in there. “Welcome, my dear neighbors, please come in,” he’ll say, holding the door open in a red flannel and Carhartt jeans as Andrew and I walk past him and enter his domain. Segundo will lead us down a narrow set of stairs and into his home.
It is warm. The walls are plastered with photographs, old black and sepia ones of his ancestors in oval-shaped, bronze frames. There’s a crackling record of holiday music played on an acoustic guitar. “A toast to new friends!” Segundo proposes, and the three of us take a shot. He explains who is in the photographs on his wall: this is Adriana, this is Alfonso, this is Alberto. He tells us the story of how his grandfather sold two hogs to pay for Adriana’s wedding ring. We laugh. Then the story of his wife’s death of cancer, of his children who live in Seattle, and of a child in Queens, and one in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The story of the little glass bells he collects. The soggy, ash-blue tattoo from his stint in the navy. The Basic cigarettes. The tiny TV set. His penchant for Mel Gibson movies. The bag of Mesquite BBQ potato chips. The ginger ale on top of the fridge. The Dirt Devil in the corner of the apartment, with no other place to be stored. Now Segundo’s workbench. Now his tools. Now I laugh tears when, after more two more shots of expensive Christmas rum, Andrew and Segundo start wrestling in the living room. We laugh as Segundo demonstrates how to perform a Hair Pin Hangman. The boys wrestle. I laugh. We take another shot. I laugh as Andrew demonstrates a Running Powerslam on Segundo. We drink, they wrestle, laugh. But after Segundo pulls a Diving Double Axe Handle on Andrew, their bodies tumble and fall, taking down with them a tiny glass snow globe off Segundo’s coffee table. The globe breaks into many pieces, and we must all slow down.
seventeen
As I help Mom pull on her jacket, my eyes fix on the scar on her left upper arm. The marking of it—a soft halo shape—reminds me of a summer night a few years ago when the two of us went skinny-dipping in a Minnesota lake (Boundary Waters, way up by the Canadian border). As we waded into the water and the black waves cupped our naked bodies, Mom turned to me and said, “There are enough stars in the sky for everyone.”
When she was a little girl, Mom got three shots in her upper triceps—vaccines for typhoid and hepatitis in her right arm, then the smallpox vaccine in her left. It never occurred to me that the soft rings on her skin were flaws; to me the scars looked like dandelion seeds or quarter-sized snowflakes, and noticing again their strange beauty made me aware of the sense I’ve always had of my mom’s magnificence, which I used to mistake for magic.
Today, we are in Michigan, on the first Saturday of November—early, golden brown and reddish days draped in a mild breeze that reminds us of last year’s snow, or of the approaching winter. It is November 1st, and tonight we’ll be celebrating our own holiday. My family calls it, “Thanks, But No Thanksgiving.” We recently established the tradition after Mom proposed we celebrate Thanksgiving a couple weeks before the official Thursday it falls on. She said that this way, her daughters (and now son-in-law) could evade expensive airline tickets and she could avoid the crowded grocery stores. She said the tradition of having Thanksgiving on one specific Thursday was pointless and obsolete and we all agreed—we’ve had enough with waiting in lines for overpriced flights—so here we are.
I zip up my fleece and slide my hands into Dad’s wool gloves; I left mine in New York because I wanted to pack light, but instead I packed stupid. I also grab his Russian fur trooper hat out of the hall closet just as Mom steps out of our house for the walk around St. Mary’s Lake. Our intention isn’t to circle the whole thing—it’s about a four-mile loop, but our blood and our conversations don’t start flowing until we’re approaching mile two, so we might as well do the whole circle rather than turn back the way we came.
Nobody has ever told me which Saint Mary the lake is named after, but I like to think it was Mary Magdalene, the adulteress saved by Jesus from death by stoning. I root for the underdog. And thanks to The Da Vinci Code and people who only go to church for Easter Sunday or Christmas Eve or funeral masses, rumor has it that Mary Magdalene was also Jesus’ secret wife and they had a baby named Sarah. (Sarah? ) Also, the lake is man-made.
When my parents moved to this neighborhood over twenty-two years ago, there were fewer houses on St. Mary’s than there were boats. We could swim across the water without having to worry about getting diced by an engine fueled by gasoline and a six-pack of Sam Adams. Nowadays, the chorus of red-winged blackbirds and cawing gulls has been replaced by the buzz of Jet Skis and speedboats. Nowadays, McMansions sprout out from the unkempt gardens behind old pea-green fishermen cabins, making the perimeter of St. Mary’s Lake look like an over-dentated mouth. Overpopulation at its finest.
“Doggies stay at home,” Mom says as we walk into the garage and past the dogs’ triangle-topped doghouses.
This year, Gonzo will turn seventeen, and even though that’s quite old for a dog—almost 119 years old, when converted to human years—the old buddy still behaves like a puppy. Except for today. Today, for some reason, Gonzo has barely gotten out of his doghouse, which isn’t normal. I suspect he’s got an upset tummy from the sweet potato peelings and apple sh
avings Mom had (intentionally) been dropping on the floor as she was cooking up tonight’s Thanksgiving feast. Mom still cooks all the time, but only at home. And now when she cooks at home, it’s for her and her family. Sweet potatoes, apples skins, cucumbers, even the sudsy puddles from the open dishwasher . . . that dog will eat anything. Keeps his coat shiny, Mom insists, and his unrestrained appetite is what probably has kept the big guy alive this long. By now, she swears, Gonzo is a certified sous chef.
“Not even The Professor?”
“Not even Gonzo,” Mom says. “Just you and me,” and she flips the switch on the wall that activates the invisible fence.
“You guys still use that stupid thing?” I ask.
A few years ago, the neighbors down Sylvan Drive convinced my parents to put up an invisible electric fence around our yard to keep Yolanda and Gonzo out of theirs. Before that, our dogs had mastered the art of breaking and entering. They’d dig holes under our front gate like convicts escaping, then caper about the neighborhood, smash into screened porches, and leap through open windows, eventually making their way into our neighbors’ kitchens to steal rhubarb pies cooling on countertops, or whatever else they could get their paws on. (Once, after catching him in the act, we learned that Gonzo had even figured out how to nudge open the revolving cabinets with his snout.) After a satisfying romp around the neighborhood, the dogs would return to our house at the dead end of the street bearing trophies, such as empty pizza boxes or spice jars or bags of Wonder Bread. One time, and Lord knows where and how he found it, Gonzo brought home a deer hoof. But after the dogs crashed a wedding reception at Greencrest Manor for the fourth or fifth time, Tom and Kathy VanDaff left a message on our answering machine telling my folks that if our dogs sabotaged one more of their buffet tables, they would call the pound and not let us know. I thought what the dogs did was hilarious, but Mom said they would lose them their clients. That’s right around the time the fence went up.
