Golden State: A Novel

by Richmond, Michelle

  “That was a different time and place,” I told Heather. “Mom did what she had to do. There’s no reason for you to have anything but the very best care.”

  “You’re my sister,” she countered. “Who’s going to take care of me better than you?”

  “Think of the red tape,” I said. “There’s paperwork, there’s protocol.”

  “Are you telling me that if a woman walked into your hospital in labor—a veteran, no less—you’d turn her away?”

  “No, but—”

  She reached over and grabbed my hands. “Listen,” she pleaded, and I knew there was more she wasn’t saying. “This is really, really important to me.”

  Her eyes were wet, her expression so hopeful. I saw the jagged scar on her forehead, the way she turned her left ear toward me. I thought of all the time she’d spent in the army, trying to atone.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Okay,” she said, grinning in that way she used to as a kid, when she knew she’d gotten her way.

  “If you’re honest,” Dennis says, “there’s a little part of you that wishes someone else was delivering the baby. Am I right, Doc?”

  I glance over at Heather, who is standing beside the bed, leaning on the mattress for support. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “And a little part of you,” he says, “that wants to take the baby and run.”

  25

  After Heather’s return, she met me every Wednesday at the VA. She would be waiting in the cafeteria when I arrived before my morning shift, the day’s Chronicle spread on the table in front of her. The paper would be covered with pen marks; she insisted on reading, despite the headaches, and had worked out a system of summarizing each paragraph in the margin before moving on to the next.

  “I’m trying to teach myself how to remember again,” she told me.

  Beside the newspaper would be a plate of eggs and bacon, hash browns smothered in ketchup, an empty milk carton. In the past, she’d been a stingy eater, preferring cigarettes to meals. It pleased me to see her enjoying her food, filling up for the baby’s sake. While she finished her breakfast I’d order two coffees from the Starbucks—regular for me, decaf for her—and we would walk the rocky path down to the cliffs. We settled into the routine as if by accident, without any discussion, and I began looking forward to our weekly walks, during which my sister and I slowly got to know each other again.

  For me, it was a process of discovery more than one of reacquaintance. Heather had changed in so many ways, it was difficult to recognize in her the young woman who had walked out of my life more than four years before. The one thing that mercifully had not changed was her accent. Heather could still draw a two-syllable word out to kingdom come. When we were together, I found my own accent creeping back.

  There was much we could say to each other, and much that, still, we could not. On the subject of our childhood, and of our mother, of the father who died and the one we never knew, as well as the subject of the town that we had both left behind, we talked extensively. Sometimes, caught off guard, she might talk about the army.

  “What I remember most from my first tour is the darkness,” she said once. “At night, it was pitch-black. There was no outside lighting at the base, and there was nothing nearby to provide even a smidgen of light. Some guy had brought The Dark Side of the Moon with him, and he’d play that song “Brain Damage” over and over again in the middle of the night, and we’d all be lying there in our cots in the blackest black you can imagine, complete darkness, complete silence except for Pink Floyd, and the words would get inside my head—you know the song.” And Heather sang a few lines.

  I tried to imagine her lying there on a cot in the dark, but all I could conjure was an image of Heather at six, climbing into my bed in the middle of the night, too scared to sleep alone.

  As for the matter of what happened to drive us apart, we were less vocal, as if we had made some silent agreement never to discuss it. While Ethan was clearly there between us—an accusation and an apology—it was as if we both feared that, by saying his name aloud, we might destroy our fragile newfound peace.

  We instead settled into a gentler parody of our old selves—batting soft insults back and forth, allowing affection to seep in through the cracks instead of expressing it outright. It worked for us, felt more natural than the emotionally direct conversations sisters always have in movies, tears flowing without embarrassment. I couldn’t imagine talking to Heather that way. We both inherited this sense of emotional distance from our mother, who hugged us quickly each night before bed and saved her I-love-yous for birthdays and special occasions. It always caught me slightly by surprise on Christmas morning, when the meager presents had been opened and the floor lay strewn with wrapping paper, and our mother, seeming truly happy, would look at each of us in turn and say, “I love you, Julie. I love you, Heather.”

  Gradually, Heather began stopping by the hospital unannounced. In the early evening, after my shift had ended, I would find her sitting on the bench near the entrance, and I would take her to dinner, or we would go see a movie at the Balboa. A couple of times, I went over to her place in the Mission and she made the Lahori beef, which was just as good as she’d promised. At first, I told Tom every time I saw her. But gradually, as his disapproval grew, I stopped mentioning our meetings.

  Eventually, my lies of omission led to more outright dishonesty. One Saturday, when Heather called to ask if I wanted to meet her for lunch, I told Tom that I had to go in to work. I was surprised by how easily the lie rolled off my tongue.

  One Sunday three months after Heather’s reappearance, she asked, “What do I have to do to get invited over?”

  “Come over this weekend,” I said impulsively.

  “Really?” she said, her eyes lighting up.

  When I told Tom, he was furious. “I told you back then that I never wanted her to step foot in this house again, Julie. I haven’t changed my mind.”

  He stood at the kitchen counter, stirring sugar into his coffee.

  “Let’s go out then,” I persisted.

  “No thanks.”

  “Where does that leave me?” I asked, setting my cup on the counter so hard coffee sloshed over the edge. “She’s my sister. She’s part of my life.”

  “That’s a choice you’ve made,” he replied, “but I don’t have to be involved.”

  “If you had a sibling, you’d understand. It was four years ago! She went to war, for God’s sake.”

  “You didn’t make her go.”

  “Maybe not, but she went because of me, and now that she’s back, it just feels right, having her around. She’s my family!”

  “I’m your family.”

  “That’s different. Heather is my blood.” What I didn’t say was that the thing he and I had together didn’t feel much like family anymore.

  “What about Ethan?” he said. “No blood ties, but we were a family.”

  “Don’t bring him into this,” I spat, furious.

  “Isn’t this all about him, when it comes down to it? When we lost Ethan, I lost you, too.”

  “I’m still here.”

  “No, you’re not! And do you know what really kills me? You’ve got it in your head that this terrible thing happened to you, but it happened to us, Julie. I loved that little boy every bit as much as you did.” He was shaking with anger. “All these years, I’ve tried to move on, for us, because before Ethan, we were good together. We were so in love. Don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” I said, taking a step toward him.

  Tom backed away, putting his hands up to block me. “But after we lost him, you shut down on our marriage. It’s been years, and I keep waiting for you to come around. I’ve been so goddamned patient. But you never come around, Julie. You brought this child into our lives, and even though I wasn’t ready to be a dad yet, I said yes, because you wanted it so much. I put everything into being a father to that little boy—everything. And it’s like i
t never occurred to you that I have every right to be really furious with you, because it was your sister who fucked everything up for us. You knew her better than anyone.”

  He lowered his voice to almost a whisper and delivered the final blow: “All this time, you’ve never taken any goddamned responsibility for what she did.” He flung his spoon into the sink, and it clattered against the stainless steel.

  Now I was the one who was shaking. I collapsed into the kitchen chair. Something dawned on me with a slow and terrifying force. “You blame me. All this time, you’ve blamed me.”

  He was silent.

  Outside, there was the sound of empty cans rattling; someone was going through our recycling. Because there were no windows in our kitchen, just a skylight, the room was subject to the whims of fog and clouds; it suddenly grew dark.

  “What about when the baby comes?” I asked finally. “What if she wants to bring the baby over here? Are you going to forbid that, too?”

  “What the fuck, Julie!” He walked to the table and stood towering over me. He grabbed my chin and turned my face toward him. “Look at me!”

  His face was glowing with anger. He’d never touched me like that before, so rough, so implacable. I was too stunned—too scared—to pull away. “She destroyed us once,” he said, his voice so cold it gave me chills. “Now you’re letting her do it again.”

  26

  That weekend, Heather did come over. Tom cleared out before she got there. When she arrived, I was still cleaning, rearranging. She thrust a spider plant into my hands. “I never know what to get for a hostess gift.”

  “It’s perfect. I’ll try not to kill it.”

  She slipped off her jacket—soft blue suede, big pearly buttons.

  “This is gorgeous,” I said, sneaking a peek at the label as I hung the jacket in the hall closet. Vera Wang. “Where did you get it?”

  “A gift,” she said.

  “At least we know he has good taste.”

  She wandered into the living room, stopped to take it all in. “It’s different,” she remarked.

  “We painted, moved the furniture around.”

  She walked over to the sofa, put one arm out behind her, one arm on her stomach, and eased herself down. Even though she wasn’t very big yet, she already moved differently, aware of her growing belly. She’d always been a naturally graceful person, and it was strange to see her so awkward. She ran her hand over the leather grain of the sofa. “It’s softer than it looks.”

  I wondered if she remembered that it was the same couch on which the social worker had sat that afternoon, side by side with Ethan.

  “Is Tom working?” she asked. “Or is he just avoiding me?”

  “He doesn’t like this. Me, you. He thinks I should cut you off completely.”

  “I don’t blame him.” Heather was fidgeting with her ring. “If you need me to leave—”

  I shook my head. “He’ll come around,” I said, although I was having a harder and harder time believing that. “Do you still like pot roast?”

  “Love it.”

  “Good, it’s got a while to go. But meanwhile, we have the first season of The Bionic Woman on Netflix.”

  Heather squealed with delight. When we were kids, we watched the show religiously. I settled on the couch and turned the TV on, and Lindsay Wagner’s golden hair floated across the screen in slow motion.

  “Jimmy knows her,” Heather said offhandedly. “She dated his cousin or something.”

  “Jimmy?” I said. “Is that—”

  She nodded. The father was still a touchy subject, one she rarely brought up. I had stopped asking, for fear of starting an argument. This was the first time she had mentioned a name.

  “You’ve seen him?” I asked.

  “He was in town last night for a big fund-raiser at some swank home in Los Altos Hills. I met him afterward at his hotel.”

  “That’s weird. I was supposed to go to a fund-raiser in Los Altos Hills last night too, but I ended up working late. Some health-care-reform thing with the governor.”

  “At the Bertram estate,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, confused. “How did you know?”

  She glanced at me slyly, the corners of her mouth turning up. “Jimmy always sees the guest list ahead of time.”

  “Stop messing around.”

  Heather didn’t say anything.

  “You don’t mean to imply—” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Jimmy. James.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “James Dupree,” I said.

  She nodded, cracking ice between her teeth.

  “The James Dupree,” I said, incredulous. This was too much, even for Heather.

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” she said matter-of-factly. Her eyes were shining.

  “You’re right.”

  “Suit yourself. But don’t you even want to know how I met him?”

  “Sure,” I said, shaking my head. “This ought to be good.”

  27

  8:20 a.m.

  The cable car comes to a stop between the two towering pagodas. Here is Chinatown proper, the length of Grant Avenue canopied with hanging lanterns. As the driver brakes, sharp pains shoot up my leg.

  One block over is the office I visited more than a year ago in search of some miracle cure. I found myself one afternoon climbing the rickety stairs of a three-story building, clutching the name and address that had been given to me by my neighbor Mrs. Yiu. At the top of the stairs was a red door, and tacked to the door was a sign I couldn’t read, black calligraphy on cream-colored paper. Beneath the sign was a framed eight-by-ten, which appeared to have been taken from a magazine, of a smiling young Chinese woman holding an infant in her arms.

  I rang the buzzer and waited. There was a rustling sound behind the door. Seconds later, it opened to reveal a man in a white oxford shirt and white pants. He was younger and taller than I’d thought he’d be. The voice on the telephone had led me to expect someone elderly.

  “I’m looking for Dr. Alex Wu,” I said uncertainly.

  “I am Dr. Wu. Please come in.” The door closed softly behind me. On the wall was a diploma in biology from San Francisco State, a master’s in science from U.C. Davis, a certificate in traditional Chinese medicine from the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences, and, below that, Dr. Wu’s NCCAOM certification. He smiled kindly as I glanced over the diplomas. “You’re in good hands,” he proclaimed. At this he held up his hands, palms forward, as if I might want to inspect them.

  “Yes,” I said. “You come highly recommended by my neighbor Alice Yiu.”

  “Alice was my piano teacher many years ago. She was once a great pianist, you know. As a child in Beijing, she was famous, a prodigy.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. “I had no idea.” I’d never once heard piano music coming through the thin walls that separated our two houses. Sometimes, she and I would talk, standing on either side of our shared wooden fence. I used to lift Ethan over the fence to Alice so he could pet the dog. “You’re a strong boy,” she would say, and Ethan, beaming, would push against the wobbly wooden fence with all his might and proclaim, “I super strong.”

  Alice had never been shy with her questions, which is how she came to know the intimate fact of my failure to conceive. I, too, had asked questions, but she had somehow managed to avoid most of them. I knew very little about her. What, I wondered, could have made her give up the piano? I thought of what Dr. Bariloche said all those years ago: life is a series of beginnings and endings. You leave one self behind and move on to another.

  Dr. Wu led me to a large rectangular room. Opposite the desk was a red leather sofa, flanked on either side by small tables, on which rested identical potted plants. The place smelled earthy and vaguely herbal.

  “Let’s begin with your personal history,” he said, taking a seat behind the desk and gesturing toward the sofa. I sank into the cushions, embarrassed to observe my own knees jutting so high in the air. It fe
lt unseemly, like some strange prelude to the pelvic exam.

  From his desk drawer, Dr. Wu removed a black notebook with red trim, still wrapped in cellophane. He meticulously unwrapped the notebook and opened it to the first page. “How long have you been trying to conceive?” he asked, pen poised above the page.

  “Forever,” I said.

  Dr. Wu frowned, and I felt my face redden. I never liked it when patients talked in codes that only they could understand. The best patients were the ones who identified their symptoms and the attending time lines precisely, factually. From this, I could construct a patient’s story and begin the path to diagnosis. “Forever” was not a quantity; it was merely a statement of emotion, of fatigue, of thwarted desire.

  “Almost three years.”

  He smiled and jotted something down in his notebook. “Very good.” I wasn’t sure what pleased him more: the fact that I was cooperating or the promise of a professional challenge. “And could you describe your fertility regimen?”

  “I just finished my second round of IVF,” I said. Then I rattled off a list of drugs and shots and hormones, timetables and temperatures. There was the IUI; the Clomid, which made me crazy; the Follistim, which made me puke, and the Novarel, which made me gain weight so fast that I looked like I really was pregnant. My past read like a laundry list of all the traditional methods, which made up in thoroughness what they lacked in romance. “Nothing works.” It seemed like the only thing we hadn’t tried was surrogacy, which both Tom and I had agreed was not for us. “Too many hands in the pie,” as he put it.

  “And your husband?” Dr. Wu asked delicately. “You’re certain this isn’t his problem?”

  “Yes.”

  It wasn’t until we lost Ethan that we began trying to conceive. While we knew that having a baby wouldn’t replace Ethan, losing him sparked an urgency that consumed me. Six months in, Tom got tested, and we discovered that the problem was entirely mine. My eggs simply were not vital. Again and again, I awoke sweating from nightmares in which my eggs took ugly forms: hard gray pebbles, black ashes, tiny metal spikes that rebuffed anything that tried to touch them. Each month, I felt the sense of failure anew. As a physician, I understood that the human body does not necessarily bow to one’s bidding, yet I was startled to realize how much of my identity turned out to be tied up with that most basic biological skill: the ability to conceive. No amount of work or persistence could get me what I suddenly wanted most: a baby.