Life Without a Recipe

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  There’s no fruit my own father loved more than the loquat: tiny, tender plums, rare and sweet. For thirty years, Dave had more or less ignored them as they bloomed and burst on his front lawn. When Scott and I took my parents a grocery bag filled to the brim with Dave’s fruit, Bud stared, lifted one with reverence. “This, look. This is eskidinia.”

  The first time my father and my father-in-law met, Bud arrived with peaches and wine-dark grapes he’d bought from a man selling them from a truck tire on the side of the road. “Dave, Dave!” Bud nearly jumped out of the car, leaving Mom to collect their bags. “You have to try these guys. You’ll love these guys.”

  I hadn’t introduced them yet. Bud held a bunch, but Dave’s hands were filled with tools or potting soil. He leaned forward to see and my father put a grape in his mouth.

  Dave took a step back. Then he said, “That is good.” After a pause, he added, “I don’t think I’ve ever been fed by a man before.” For years, the memory returned to him at random moments and he would tell the story again.

  Dave still lives at the lakeside home where his children grew up. The kids got married and moved away, Dave divorced, remarried, but stayed at the old place. The yard rambles down to the water, filled with fish, gators, egrets. A few miles away rise the steaming freeways of Orlando, a dreary downtown, but here you can smell tangerine, avocado, acres of citrus fields, the freshness from the lake washing the air. And there is Dave, tall and good-looking, affable as Jimmy Stewart, reaching the highest branches or bent over his workbench, tinkering.

  Just a few months ago, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, though he’d never touched a cigarette. Now he’s on oxygen: still genial, but propped in bed. Within a month, the medications have distorted his body—shrinking and then bloating him. He’s no longer hungry; his wife Judie struggles to find something that tempts him. We bring him crackers that are made out of nuts—mostly for the novelty—anything at the market that looks interesting or distracting. One of his lungs is filling with the hard, gnarled substance of tumor: It’s overtaking him, despite radiation and caustic treatments, tearing at him the way a dropped stitch unravels a whole sweater. We talk about guided imagery, tai chi, acupuncture, massage therapy. He is open to all sorts of alternative therapies. As his body breaks down, his mind seems to be growing freer and wilder. People keep calling and dropping by, bringing food, offering services. Dave and Judie curl up in their airy bedroom, watching TV, the rafters of leaves beyond their windows.

  Scott and I drop our bags then pace between the rooms, waiting to hear something, scanning the heaps of food Dave’s friends have dropped off—piles of coffee cakes, Danish, boxed doughnuts. The phone rings at 7:00 a.m.: “They started inducing a while ago,” Connie says. “I forgot to mention that. But don’t come to the hospital.”

  7:40: “She definitely wants this adoption, there’s no question. She says you can come soon.”

  8:14: “That nurse just doesn’t want her to do it. She thinks she can get Lilah a job at Burger King.”

  8:50: “Okay, well—she doesn’t want you at the birth.”

  Ah, disappointment. I feel a pressure between my ribs, flat and aching, like swallowed tears. “No. Of course. We understand. Can we come right after?”

  “Sure. Probably.”

  Around 10:30, the four of us assemble for breakfast, the counter stacked with donated bakery boxes, a drift of icing, cheese filling, toasted pecans, apple strudel, apricot glaze. Between the wheeze and thump of the oxygen machine and the jingling phone, we lean on our elbows and chat with Dave and Judie about parenting.

  “Don’t let the kid know you’re a socialist,” Dave warns me.

  “I promise, I won’t.”

  “What are you going to tell her about the war on terror?”

  Judie rolls her eyes and balls up her napkin. “Here we go.”

  “I’ll probably wait till she’s three or four to get into that.”

  He laughs, then says, “No, but really?”

  Scott says, “Yeah, she might want to know sooner. Her first words might be threat level orange.”

  Dave laughs, then scowls. “I’m glad you think terror is funny.”

  Judie says, “For Pete’s sake, David.”

  “But just for the sake of argument—like when she asks about President Bush—”

  “Which she will,” Scott says. “Obviously.”

  “If she asks about Bush—how are you going to describe him?”

  I hunch and hold up claws. “He was squinty and he laughed like ‘heh, heh, heh.’”

  The phone spins and whirs: We jump. Scott takes it into the next room. Each call has gotten progressively more nerve-wracking, so we’ve taken to trading back and forth. I can hear his voice lift, he runs back to the table. “Gracie’s born! She’s healthy, almost eight pounds!”

  “Oh.” It’s a rush like a bucket of water over the head; my shoulder blades seem to unpin, my chest fills. “Oh my God.”

  Judie hugs us. Dave drums the table, then stops to catch his breath. “But how long is she?”

  Scott nods, phone pressed against his ear. “She’s as long as an otter! But apparently she’s already registered with the socialist party.”

  Dave’s smile is brief and sneaky. “Joke now. That’s right. Just wait.”

  I’m clutching the table. “Can we go see her?”

  Scott snaps the phone shut. “She says in an hour. She’ll call soon.”

  We call people, crowing, “Eight pounds! Sea otter!” Mostly we wander around aimlessly from room to room, until Judie asks us to take it outside. We hold hands and stroll through the lakeside neighborhood, wild-eyed sleepwalkers. We check the cell every twenty minutes, but an hour passes, then two. Three. Waiting to see our daughter, to hear news, gradually becomes a form of low-grade torment. I note an incipient ache in my throat like a knot, my breath pushed to the top of my lungs. The swimming gestures of the palm trees, the crenellated surface of the gray lake, the silent, matter-of-fact cars and bikes and dogs and billboards—everything is otherworldly and heartlessly normal, as if this could be just another day. By two o’clock, I beg Scott to call Connie. Vagabonds, we sit on the grass in front of his father’s house. Scott hunches over into the phone. “Hey, it’s us again.” Long pause. “Scott and Diana?” Pause. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Is it—look, is she changing her mind or anything? Yes, but, I see, okay. Is she going to change her mind?” He’s up and doing a boardroom pace, back and forth, over the front lawn. “So—okay. Okay. Okay.” He closes the phone and looks at me: I can practically see him trying to order his thoughts.

  “She changed her mind,” I say quietly. “She doesn’t want to do it.”

  “No, no,” Scott’s voice is light and crisp. “Not exactly. I don’t know.” He lowers himself to the grass, puts an arm around my shoulders. “I guess she’s just not totally sure she wants us to come to the hospital today. I mean, right this second.”

  Thoughts run in pieces through my fingers. Over these days and months, I’ve formed an attachment, a link—invisible and intangible, yet very real—to our growing child who-is-not-yet-our-child. Yet I must, it seems, be prepared to relinquish her, to do it with good grace and equanimity. “We don’t have to bother her—we won’t go by her room. If we could just stop by the nursery and peep at the baby? We don’t even have to hold her—just, you know, to see her.”

  Scott takes my hand and there’s something in the gentleness of this gesture that makes the skin prickle up the back of my neck. I know I should feel lucky for the love in my life, yet already I’m hungry for this one as well.

  “She doesn’t want us to go into the hospital. She doesn’t want us in the building.”

  “Did she say that? The building? Did the social worker tell you that?”

  Lilah and Connie have turned into “she” and “the social worker.”

  “She made it pretty clear. ‘She wants to take a nap and rest and she doesn’t want to think about anything.’ She says she can’t
relax if we’re in the building.”

  “Oh.” My head lowers. “God, I’m no good at this.” I feel spinning anxiety that she is about to change her mind. What chutzpah, it occurs to me now, that I’d never even considered this possibility before. The agency had mentioned that birth mothers will change course about a quarter of the time—generally, not surprisingly, right after giving birth. That percentage had wisped past me like smoke signals. Later, a social worker will confide it’s closer to half and half.

  Now Scott pulls me in so I can feel the scruff of his grown-out shave on top of my head. “Hang on,” he says. I feel the sigh fill and exit his chest.

  We’d thought we’d be at this birth and hold our daughter in her first hours. A dry little swallow, tight throat, my broody self; caught in the usual spaces between expectations and reality. I feel a bump of guilt over how angry I used to get with Gram and her talk of disappointment. Our relationship became more layered and complicated when I entered my teens and began to notice how I’d been unwittingly enlisted in her war with Bud. “Stop telling me those stories,” I’d barked at her once. “All that about horrible men. I don’t hate men—I’m not like you!” She was hurt and amazed. “I don’t hate men, either,” she’d said. “I’m just telling you how it is.”

  Now it seems she’d wanted to warn me, to brace me for whatever we couldn’t know, couldn’t even guess was coming. But when you haven’t yet felt big disappointment, such talk can feel like someone is trying to rob you of happiness, darkening the colors. Grace just wanted me to be ready.

  Winter Park, an upscale suburb, is a place where life appears to take a little less effort. Pregnant mothers are draped in linens, their babies transported in cloudlike beds, on wheels that scarcely touch the ground. No one cries on these sidewalks. Trying to distract ourselves, we stroll, peer through windows at twinkling pendant lamps and low, creamy couches. While we’re sitting at a café, not touching our food, the phone rings. I seize it, then close my eyes. “Hi.”

  “Tonight at the very latest!” Connie’s voice bounces. I imagine a rubber ball going up and down. It keeps moving, just out of range.

  That evening, we sit with Dave watching the news. Tomorrow is the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama. Dave shakes his head, smiling. “The things you never thought you’d ever see.” He and his wife sit crooked together on the big recliner. They had planned to finally take a trip to Europe this summer. Judie canceled the tickets a few days ago. At the back of their house is a terrace with vines and a trellis and many windows and doors that the summery night glides through. It carries the sound of field insects, a familiar scent of hot earth and roads. We watch more news then switch to World War II documentaries. But my attention keeps wandering to the night shining in the doors, the silent telephone on the kitchen counter, 8, 9, 10 o’clock and no call. Finally, at 11 o’clock, Scott’s cell rings. He leaves the room. I don’t have the heart to follow. I’ve been trying to coach myself to accept reversal, to look at it all dispassionately, with curiosity, the way that Dave, with his engineer’s mind, tells the pulmonary technicians midprocedure that he finds getting his lung drained “fascinating.” Dave has had long talks with Scott in which he confesses to great curiosity about this whole business of illness and dying. “I keep wondering if I’m going to have some big emotional reaction. But so far, not so much, really. . . .”

  Why can’t I do that? Pull back a little? We haven’t once held this baby or looked into her eyes, but I am bereft at the thought of losing her. Scott has reassured me that if Lilah changes her mind we’ll just wait for the next baby. “Remember what Bud says about us’meh? We can’t fight this stuff.” His gaze is steady. “We’ll have the baby we’re meant to have.”

  Yes, okay. Then I think, no. This baby. I feel it all the way to the small bones in my fingers.

  Scott returns to the room; we look at him. He gestures for me to come back in the bedroom. I sit with him and say again, “She’s changed her mind. It’s okay.”

  He shakes his head. “Connie says she still wants to do it. But we can’t see the baby yet. Lilah wants to be left alone tonight.”

  He holds the side of my head. I hold his arm. We sit together like that, very still, not talking, just waiting.

  Hi Buddies,

  Hooray!! Grace (Coquina? Nalani? Anaya? Bimini?) Abujaber-Eason was born today, 7 pounds 11 ounces, without very much hair. Dad asked if she looks like me, to which we say, yes, she looks exactly like both of us.

  Just one little detail, we haven’t actually met her yet. . . . It may be another day or so before we can swoop in and actually stare at our little bean. If anyone has any advice on how to achieve deep Zen states of patience, please let us know.

  Xxx

  D and S

  We wake before dawn, peering at each other’s outlines in the shadow. Gray light tilts into the room, filtering through the windows, rising slowly, faintly, a flinty shadow softening to pearl, a nearly invisible blue sky, the transparency of skin. On the kitchen counters, there’s another big breakfast: more well-wishers have come with doughnuts, cakes, fruits, cellophane boxes for my in-laws. So many plates, bags, and boxes stacked, toppling across the counter. We nibble pastry without much appetite, and eventually drift back into the TV room. The screen flashes with images of Obama’s inauguration. Together, we watch the assemblies of new political figures, a procession through the building, emerging to the doors, press, and crowds. Obama’s family is there, the previous administration as well, the smirking, outgoing president: Such a sharp contrast between the last of the good old boys and whatever this new paradigm will be. On his ceremonial walk to the people, Obama moves fluidly. He has a fine, upright head, an open bearing; he scans the sky, the Capitol grounds, collected, waiting. The massive crowd can’t stop cheering—wave after wave crests. The churning crowds, ceaseless shattering applause, the ecstatic sense of a future radiates from the screen. Several times during the broadcast my breath catches; tears slide down my face. The world is so immense at this moment, filled, it seems, with revelations. Even my father-in-law is moved. He shakes his head. “You know? I voted for the other one, but I can’t help feeling excited. Funny. Like, you just really want the guy to do good.”

  The phone rings. I can’t hear Connie over the cheering on the TV, so I ask her to wait. Once I’m sitting alone in the front yard, I say, “Okay?”

  She says, “Get ready!”

  I’m a little disoriented, my emotions radiant and blurred: I don’t know whether my eyes are damp from the TV, from the phone call, from the way the light sharpens and vibrates on the orange tree leaves. “Today?” I stand up. “Really, you’re sure?”

  “You’ll take your daughter home.”

  First: delays. Lilah doesn’t want to wait in the hospital to complete the adoption paperwork. She’s ready to clear out, so the social worker, the agency’s lawyer, a notary, and two witnesses need to be reassembled at Lilah’s home before anything can happen. “Can we call anyone for you?” I tug on an orange leaf, its fragrance rising out of leftover rain. “Drive someone somewhere? Anything?”

  Just dig down and wait, Connie advises, they’re working on it.

  Odd reports come in, scattering around us, bits of confetti in the air: One of the birth mother’s friends thinks the baby is too pretty to give up and maybe the friend wants to keep her. The birth mother thinks of a few other men who might be the father, potentially requiring us to formally notify several more people of this birth. The evangelical nurse feels that she needs to have another sit-down with Lilah. The birth mother decides that we should get to the hospital within the next ten minutes to prove our dedication. Connie calls back minutes later: No, wait. The day stretches out. The phone’s ring hardens, a small, cranial hammer. Each previous snarl melts away before the new one. Scott tries to console me, saying at least we’re not doing this in a frozen Eastern-bloc country, pockets filled with baksheesh. Then he pauses, adding, Well, maybe today is a compressed version of the freezin
g Eastern-bloc-country experience. I send a series of e-mail updates to my sisters and a few friends; they counsel patience and calm distance: “Unfocus your eyes,” someone writes. My friend Lola suggests a nap. This strikes me as almost comical—as if anyone could relax! I stretch out in the guest bedroom with a thought of attempting to meditate and free-fall into sleep.

  An hour later, there’s the sound of a voice through the wall. Scott is talking on the cell in the hallway. The door eases open; for a moment, I see just his eyes. The door creaks as he enters, a small, quiet smile on his face, and I feel all the blood in my body begin to levitate; breath leaves me. He says, “Time to meet her.”

  The short winter day is already arcing toward its close. On the highway, I see shreds of unexpected color in the sky, the clouds high and massing like their own mysterious country, backlit and ineffable. But the traffic! The drivers race after each other’s taillights on the rainy highway, throwing out spume. At one bend, we watch in the rearview mirrors two swerving cars collide just behind us like bumper cars, then spin off to either side of the road. We just keep going.

  Once we finally get there, it takes far too long to find the entrance to the hospital complex, too long to find parking, too long to run to the front door, for someone to direct us, in our adrenalized, headlight-dazed state, to the right lobby. We have to stand still and smile for photos, placed in ID badges looped over our heads, in order to be allowed to enter. Before sending us upstairs, the security guard with a short, gray nimbus of curls stops us to squeeze our arms. He rumbles, “God bless you two.”

  The corridor leading to the nursery has closed-circuit monitors and a steel double door that unlocks with a mechanical thump, like something in a medium-security prison. We speak our names into the intercom and the door vibrates, whirs open. Scott takes my hand: It’s like walking onstage, only this stage is hushed and crowded with tiny, even breaths and bassinets propped here and there on wheeled carts. The big room is shadowy, translucent with sleep. A nurse holding a clipboard looks up, smiling broadly—to my relief. She says, “Scott and Diana?”