In Short Measures

by Michael Ruhlman

  If I write a story worthy of your eyes, I’ll send it along. I just may put my mind to it.

  Yours,

  Emerson

  I wrote back:

  I hope you do! And I meant what I said, dear friend. You know how to reach me.

  G

  Those literally have been the last words we’ve exchanged, and now I need to decide whether I’m obligated to say more.

  Nine

  I began this story in early August, with lightened duties at the library, to try to understand what happened that day in May that would change my life.

  In July, Maggie, my primary care physician, looked over my blood work from my summer physical and said, “Well, I can tell you one thing for sure: the reason you’ve stopped having your period is not menopause.” Then she looked at me hard and said, “You, girl, are pregnant.” She closed the manila folder and said, “You’re also old for pregnancy. So we’ve got some talking to do.”

  I nearly tipped over in my chair.

  Maggie, who’s my age, went on to say she’d seen this only once, a friend of hers, not a patient, spontaneous pregnancy at age forty-five. The situation was fraught enough, she said, that if I wanted to proceed, she recommended I also see a high-risk pregnancy specialist, someone who would do something called a CVS, an invasive but reliable test to examine actual chromosomes, and could also perform specialized ultrasound examinations for spinal, heart, and stomach abnormalities.

  If I intended to keep it, she said. Given the risks for the baby and me—my age, the difficulty of raising a child at my age, single no less—she recommended I at least consider termination.

  It took two minutes, at least, for the shock to wear off, but it felt like ten silent hours of time—me alone—the shock of it—how I’d never even given a thought that I’d be able to conceive. Not a single thought of it. But when the news sank in, I decided immediately to accept it as the gift that it was—its very unlikelihood a sign in itself—and, provided it and I could be healthy, there was not an ounce of doubt about what I intended to do this time around. Now, at the end of August on a day very much like the one I described earlier, two days before the beginning of the term, when I first beheld Emerson twenty-five years ago, I conclude this memoir. I imagine my son as an adult and I pray to be alive to see him off to college. I hope he’s every bit as beautiful as Em was, and as beautiful as the young men strolling the Duke walkways past me now as I type these words, beneath the magnificent willow oaks that line the main quads.

  Yes, I know it’s a boy from all the tests. I waited thirteen weeks to give him any chance to end himself if that’s what needed to happen, telling myself every day not to hope too much, to assume the worst, that at my age my eggs were more likely than not to be defective. But he stayed. I’ve had all the tests that are available at Duke Medical Center and more are on the way, but yesterday, fifteen weeks from the day of conception, Maggie looked over all the reports from the specialists and said, “All systems are go, Grimsley. You’re having this baby boy. Hope you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready for whatever comes,” I told her, with what I know was the biggest grin of my life. I was ready, was and am. My son already feels like a breathing creature I can love for all time. I know for certain he will be the second man I’ll want and be meant to love.

  *

  Of course, the question of whether to tell Emerson about my situation has been the main thing on my mind since I found out, and I’ve been back and forth on it, worse than Hamlet.

  I haven’t told anyone yet, although my colleagues will pretty quickly know something’s up when I forgo our regular occasional night out at Magnolia Grill. I have maybe four cigarettes a year so, that’s not a problem, and I will miss that soothing glass of wine when I pick up a book at the end of the day to read. Maggie asked me if I had any concerns about social issues—it’s not common for a single woman your age to be pregnant, she told me, there will be talk, you’ll probably get more attention than you want. She said, “You haven’t offered who the father is, so I’m guessing that’s going to remain unknown for the time being.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, that will really stir things up in this little university community.”

  “So let people talk. They’re so damned bored with their own lives, they’ll have a ball with this one.”

  “I don’t know, it’s kind of conservative down here if you haven’t noticed.”

  “Anyone who judges me harshly for what I choose to do with my own body can sit on a corncob.”

  Maggie chuckled. “I’m glad I know you, Grimsley.”

  “Feeling’s mutual.”

  She put me on a wagonload of vitamins, told me how much and what kind of exercise I needed to do, daily, to prepare my body for this, and the exercise has become a form of meditation, transcendental even, a religion, caring for my body with a devotion I’d rarely given anything other than reading. I didn’t think of my uterus as some delicate wine glass that had to be handled with care. I thought of my whole body, this carrier of a new life, the way an athlete must think about hers. I was preparing for one big important performance, and if that went well, I’d have some strenuous years ahead. I’d seen those shadowy lidded eyes on my brother and sister after long periods of sleeplessness. I’d seen the relief on their faces when I stayed at their home so that they could get away from the kids for two nights—you’d think it was New Year’s Eve, they’d be so giddy! Mary told me she and Jim didn’t have an actual adult conversation for eight years after their first boy, Connor, was born. That wasn’t going to be an issue for this old maid.

  But Emerson. This was a question.

  I started, I think, no fewer than twenty emails to him over the summer. I tried another ten on a legal pad with a ballpoint pen, and I could scarcely get through more than a few lines, whether from “Well, old friend, life throws us some wingding curveballs, have you noticed?!” to “I’ll just come right out and say it since I don’t know any other way.”

  Problem was, I didn’t know if he’d want to know. I didn’t know enough about his life to predict the consequences of the news. Last thing I wanted was to hurt him or his family.

  But I also didn’t want to deprive him of his part in the situation, if this time he wanted a part. And say the marriage didn’t actually work and he or Collista called it quits? Then he truly might want to know. Wouldn’t he? Maybe not. I hear parenting is hard even for youngsters, so maybe this would be one too many anchors that would keep him from doing what he needed to do for the second half of his life.

  Ultimately, whatever the consequence for him, whatever he’d think about it or want to say, it wasn’t going to change what I intended to do, which was to bring this baby into the world, best I could, whether Emerson wanted me to or not.

  So, in trying to figure out a way to tell him, I just started telling myself this story, who I am and how it happened, and once I started I realized that I wasn’t writing my way to an understanding of that day and night, or to an answer as to whether or how to tell Emerson the news. I was writing this for the boy inside me, so that he would know how he came to be. I figured it was a good enough story to tell, and one he’d need to know. This record will be here for him when he’s ready for it.

  I love my dear boy, already I do, and not just the idea of him. I love the living cells of him in my flesh, half mine, half Em’s. I want my son to know that Em was the one man I ever loved, that he was a good and a smart man who honored me in every possible way; he was always kind and good to me, and his parting gift to me was this precious new life. Maybe that was the reason for all of it from the very start. Who knows—the world is full of mystery and wonder and, yes, shame. Whether or not I decide in the end to tell Em, I will know in my heart that I did what I thought best, and I hope our son will understand.

  And I now know. Just this very second! The weight has lifted! Thank you, keyboard and computer! Thank you, Act of Writing itself. Thank you, story.

 
I will not tell him.

  It’s clear. At least not till our son is born whole and breathing, a viable little man, and provided he doesn’t kill his mother in the process. Odds are better than they used to be in these parts, but it can happen, and I am nearly a half century old. I figure if that happens, then whoever raises the baby—my sister or brother, or their kids—they’ll know about this document and give it to him when they feel he’s ready. Perhaps he’ll want to hunt down his father—I’m guessing that he will. I hope he will keep in mind the physician’s credo: first do no harm.

  So, that’s that. Hamlet should have been a writer; it would have taken longer, but everyone wouldn’t have had to kill each other!

  My due date is the first week of February 2011. I can hardly wait.

  PART II

  One

  I arrived in Los Angeles in the early evening on November 5, twenty-six weeks, three days into my pregnancy. I’d fixated so much on my pregnancy, and keeping the growing life inside me healthy, that length of pregnancy was how I measured all time. The longer I went, the more I stressed about it. I was terrified of waking in the middle of the night and giving birth prematurely, or worse, having a stillbirth (how can two words so sweet in themselves, terrify me with their awfulness when combined?). I felt as though this life inside me was my life and if I lost it I would die myself. This is probably wrong, not literally true but emotionally true, as my therapist would insist I acknowledge. Yes, got one of those, too—a therapist—never would have believed it myself given how skeptical I am of psycho mumbo jumbo, but I did, to deal with all this, and I’m glad for her, good old-fashioned Germanic Ericsonian; she’s regularly telling me, “Grimsley, we can control our actions, but we can’t control our emotions. We try to manage them, but we can’t turn them on and off like a light switch. It’s okay to feel as you do.” Yet I did feel it almost literally, as if this little man inside me was my actual life, this beating heart, my heart, the elbow or heel that’s pressed on me from within, my own soul wanting to be unleashed. With two months to go, I prayed to God Almighty. Laus deo.

  *

  I was so rattled just to be in a rent-a-car at LAX trying to type my destination into the GPS machine I’d also rented that I couldn’t figure out why it was taking me so long to type in the name of my hotel. I typed with the speed of a chimp, thinking it was my addled brain. And I was addled, because it wasn’t till I’d finally got the zip code and half the name of the hotel in that I realized that the keypad was in alphabetical order, with A in the upper left and Z down in the lower right. (Never realized how programmed the brain can get for the qwerty keyboard system.) Once I realized it was the keypad and not my brain that slowed me, I calmed a bit. And lordy, that GPS thing, what a godsend. How on Earth would I have found the Standard without it, light fading fast as I drove up La Cienega Boulevard. “In 200 feet, turn right onto Sunset Boulevard.” A woman’s voice but definitively mechanical; I’ve heard guys actually have fantasy relationships with their GPS’s voice. No danger here. “Turn right onto Sunset Boulevard.” Thank you, GPS.

  A valet parked for me and I had a carry-on packed for a two-night stay with a redeye home Sunday evening.

  All seemed normal outside. But goodness, I felt like it was 1983 and I was on mushrooms. One of the grad students I work with, who’s from here, told me I should stay at the Standard. It was like a party, not a hotel lobby, music was thumping away, there was a woman in what looked like a giant fish tank reading an iPad, and scantily clad, yes scantily—I’m not kidding—in a glass case behind the very gay check-in guy. My room had a bean bag chair! All of it disorienting for a Durham girl.

  I stepped out onto the small balcony overlooking an impossibly blue pool around which throngs drank and smoked to the music. Happily the place had a decent retro diner, where I devoured a burger at the counter. Then, three hours ahead of LA time (and about three decades behind it), I slept fast and hard, despite the music and crowd noise, my nerves and disorientation having exhausted me and given way to deep blackness.

  Part of my exhaustion was also the nature of the errand, not a happy one. This trip to the West Coast was entirely unexpected. Frankly, I wasn’t completely sure I knew why I was here. I wasn’t obligated to be here, but I felt I did need to be. But I slept because the big sadness had simply not hit yet, as I was sure it was bound to, and did, surprisingly—the literal knowledge yes, but the visceral sadness was two days away.

  *

  The diner was open twenty-four hours, so I could get some tea and food when I gave up trying to sleep at 4:30 the morning of the service. Google maps told me the Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church was just a few miles down the road, and I was assured that the notorious traffic in L.A. would not be an issue.

  I had some orange juice and hot mild decaf tea, served to me by a sleepy young man with a handlebar mustache.

  So. The sadness.

  Em died on Halloween in a car accident on a road I knew only from a weird movie a decade old. Mulholland Drive. I’d put him on Google Alerts just to keep track of his doings, but there hadn’t been any news of him whatsoever. Like I said, I intended to keep the news of my pregnancy out of his life—at least until the little man arrived, and more likely forever—but I wanted to know what he was up to. Recognizing this, and combined with our one last wonderful night together, well, I can’t say I wasn’t sad after he’d gone irrevocably, returned to his family in Los Angeles. What did I do that morning after he left and I’d had my quiet coffee looking out over my pond? I swept up the broken jug and dumped it in the kitchen trash bin, put on practical work clothes, and headed to Perkins Library. I treated it like a kind of death, because in my mind that’s the way it had to be. I had to keep my word and accept that I’d never see him again; for the second time in my life, I had to let him sail off to LA. And I did have my life and family here, older now, and we have only so long on the surface of earth—talk about small proportions, one life relative to all of nature—so I was okay riding this small life out, knowing I’d been luckier than most. Having had a true and genuine love that had been wonderfully confirmed twenty-five years later. That, in addition to what I’ve already confessed at the beginning: gratitude for my life so far.

  Yes, I wanted to hear from him, be there for him, tell him to write, write for your life, encourage and inspire him as I once did and always could. Even from a distance I knew I could do it. I did it when he first moved to New York to become a “real” writer.

  I had, until recently, forgotten when our correspondence actually ended. Honestly, I couldn’t have told you. I’d thought it had been gradual rather than traumatic. And he did say that last night we were together that he’d send me pages if he wrote anything he deemed worthy. Sadly he hadn’t. Sent me the pages, that is.

  But as I was saying, truthfully, I felt nothing but gratitude for what I’d had by midlife and accepted the day Emerson left that this was my lot, the family I had and the work I loved in the place that was my home. Until Maggie dropped the bomb, and the whole game changed, and I spent most of the summer writing my way toward an understanding of what had happened and what to do in terms of telling or not telling Emerson. And by then I had six months before the next big decision might have to be made—I’d take it as it comes.

  As I’m taking this latest development. I returned from work and checked my email and there it was. “Google Alerts” in the subject field, and without even clicking to open the email itself, I could read the news from the Los Angeles Times: EMERSON RANDALL, WRITER AND PRODUCER FOR FILM AND TELEVISION, 44, KILLED IN AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT.

  Details were slim, but there was a suggestion that, pending a coroner’s report, alcohol had been involved. And indeed the second, and only other, Google Alert I received was in my mail the next evening (after a day of normal work that I recall only for its flatness, a day without any texture or color or emotion at all), a follow-up story and complete obit. When he’d driven off the road and hit a tree dead center, his blood alcohol
level was more than three times the legal limit. The article included details of when and where the service would be held. I immediately checked flights, but I did not purchase a ticket right away. I waited two full days before I felt sure that my initial instinct was right. Again, I didn’t know why I was actually going. I only knew I had to go. So on Thursday after work, when that sense had not abated, I booked the flight to LAX via Charlotte. To give myself time to absorb it all and perhaps take in a little bit of the city that Em had made his home, a place to which I’d never been, I delayed my departure till the end of the day Sunday, departing at 11 p.m., which would allow me to arrive at work on time Monday, though it would be a difficult shift, I knew. And I knew if I wanted to catch a morning flight out once Saturday was done, or felt too tired, I could rebook a Sunday morning flight. As it turned out, I’m glad I kept that Sunday clear.

  The cloudless day was pleasantly cool, uncommonly, or so I was told by Mr. Handlebar Moustache, who had a look at my destination on my iPad and assured me ten minutes tops on a Saturday morning.

  *

  It took seven minutes, and I had a good half hour to kill before I could even go in, but at least I got a parking spot. The service was at eleven so I kind of loitered nervously up and down the street beneath the lovely banyan trees growing along this quiet stretch of Rodeo Drive. The church was lovely, a Spanish Mission–style building with a tower, a front gable, and a gabled entryway with barrel-tiled roofing. After I watched five couples enter the church, all elderly, I allowed myself in and sat in the second to last pew on the right. I liked the dark, woody feel of the place, uncomfortable pews, kind of Arts and Craftsy, décor-wise. Anyhow, it was neither a showy venue, nor a New-Agey one. I knew Emerson didn’t believe in a Christian god—we’d talked about this—or at least he didn’t back then, but maybe he’d had a change of heart. I kind of hoped so, given he either knew he was wrong (I prayed for his life everlasting) or perhaps he was right and most of the world is wrong and there really is “nothing but blackness” waiting for us, as one of Em’s writer-heroes, Richard Yates, put it somewhere.