Coming Back to Me

by Caroline Leavitt

  Now that Molly was awake, more and more people came by. Orderlies bringing her water leaned against her bed to watch her TV. Nurses picked up the photos of Otis Gary had brought in and swooned over him. “Those eyes! You must be in heaven!” they told Molly. They said Otis looked like Gary. They said he favored Molly. Sometimes they said he looked like neither one of them, and no matter what the nurses said, no matter how expectantly they looked at Molly, Molly didn’t know what to say to any of them.

  “You’re amazing,” one of the day nurses told her. “You fought so hard to get back to your son.”

  Molly was struck silent. She didn’t feel as if she had fought to get back to Otis. It had just happened,

  The nurse adjusted Molly’s IV, staring at it critically. She flicked the tubing with a nail and then frowned and flicked at it again. “Well, when he’s a teenager and starts to act up, you can tell him, ‘Hey, buster, I went through hell for you, now you’d better just behave if you know what’s good for you.’”

  Molly looked at the nurse, shocked. “I would never tell him that! This isn’t his fault!”

  The nurse laughed and dropped the IV tube. “Ah, spoken like a true mother!”

  But Molly didn’t feel like a mother, true or otherwise. She didn’t feel any connection to this Otis. The baby she felt a part of had been the one she had carried inside of her.

  She had known everything about Otis back then. How a sweet biscuit could make him kick, how he preferred to bunch up on her left side, how orange juice made him hiccup so long and hard she felt as if he were percolating inside her belly. She didn’t know anything about this baby now. She had heard other mothers say they could pick out their babies from two rooms away just by their scent, just by the sound of their cries, but Molly couldn’t have picked Otis out if he was right there in front of her, banked by two other babies.

  “I have to see my baby,” she told Karen when she came by on rounds.

  Karen frowned, “Molly, we’ve been through this before. I still don’t think that’ll be great for the baby. There’s too much infection on this floor. Let his immune system get a little stronger. Wait a bit.”

  “What, two years? Three? When he’s getting married?”

  Karen smiled. “Atta girl, keep up that sense of humor.”

  But Molly didn’t think anything was funny. If Karen didn’t think it was a good idea, she’d just find a doctor who did. She lay in a kind of wait in her bed, and when Dr. Price strode in, Molly cornered him.

  “It’ll exhaust you and you need all your strength,” Dr. Price said.

  “But I’m stronger now.”

  He lifted the sheets and gently prodded Molly’s belly. He pulled the sheets down again. “Kids are astonishingly resilient. You’d do best not to worry.”

  She thought of Suzanne hoisting Otis high in the air, the two of them laughing. She thought of Otis grabbing on to Suzanne’s long hair. And then she thought of Suzanne and Gary, taking Otis to the park the way Suzanne said they did, sitting on the grass on a blanket so that anyone walking by might think they were a family. “Let me see my son,” she said.

  “I’ll see you later this evening,” he said.

  Each day, they tried to get her to do a little more. A therapist came in and made Molly stand, which made Molly so dizzy she was sure she was going to throw up. They showed her exercises she could do in bed: flexing her feet, making arm circles. Not too much for fear she might hemorrhage, not too little or she’d never get strong. “A devil’s bargain,” Molly groused. And they began to let her eat. First Jell-O, rationing it out to her a teaspoon at a time, and then a list of soft, bland foods that Molly considered as carefully as if it were a fourstar menu. Never had Jell-O tasted more delicious. She swore the green had a different taste than the yellow. Never had oatmeal seemed like such a feast.

  No matter what she ordered, they brought her something different. She checked off cereal and they brought her French toast. She checked off soup and they brought her steak. “I didn’t order this!” she told the woman bringing the food. “I’m supposed to have bland food!”

  The woman looked at her wearily. “You’re not going to make me argue with the kitchen, are you?” she asked Molly. “You do that, and by the time I get you your breakfast it’ll be dinnertime. Why don’t you just save us all some trouble and eat what’s there?”

  It became a kind of joke, and she began to have Gary bring her food so they could eat together. She made requests, hoping he’d get what she wanted, trying to gauge how far he’d go for her. Soup from the Kiev. Chinese cold noodles from Chinatown. He always came, and after two bites, her appetite was gone. “You have the rest,” she told him. The one time she asked Suzanne to bring her plain pasta, Suzanne came with a tuna sandwich, greasy with mayonnaise, and after that Molly never asked her to bring anything again.

  Later, when Dr. Price came by, he had a strange secretive look playing about his face. “What?” she said. She could sit up now, like an expert.

  “I see you’re eating. Not much, but you’re still eating. And your blood levels are getting a bit better.”

  Molly looked at him, waiting.

  “Does that mean I can go home?”

  “Well, no, of course not. Not by a long shot—” he admitted.

  “So what does it mean?”

  He grinned again, the first real smile she had seen on him. “It means you can see your son.”

  Molly started. “Are you kidding?”

  “You have to be in a wheelchair. It’s just in the solarium and just for a short time. I discussed this with Karen and the other doctors and we all think it might be good for your state of mind. And good for the baby.”

  As soon as Dr. Price left, Molly started crying. A new nurse walked into the room, young and coltish, carrying a thermometer, and she looked nervous when she saw Molly weeping.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Please, will you buy me makeup?”

  “What?” The nurse stood beside Molly.

  “My son is coming. Please, I haven’t seen him in three months. I have to look good. I need mascara. Brown eye shadow, some sort of glossy lipstick in a brownish red. Blush. A mirror. And—” Molly sobbed. “Gold hoop earrings. Tiny ones.”

  The morning Molly was to see Otis, she woke at four. She grabbed her bag of cosmetics and spread them across the sheet. She brushed her hair, putting it up and then taking it down. She put on the gold hoops, and struggled with the makeup, squinting critically at herself in the hand mirror. Her skin looked ashy to her. Her lips were chapped and her eyes seemed like pin dots in her face. She did the best she could, but she felt as if she were readying herself for a blind date, for a meeting with someone everyone had told her about and all she could think of was, What if he doesn’t like me? What if I make a bad first impression? She swept the makeup back into the bag and into a drawer. She waited. her hands tensely folded.

  It seemed like years before a nurse came to get her, pushing a wheelchair, smiling broadly at her. “Hey, you look good. Your color’s better. The meds must be doing their job.”

  “It’s Maybelline,” Molly said, and the nurse laughed.

  She wheeled Molly lazily toward the solarium, the IV pole squeaking alongside her. Molly was so tense, she wanted to scream at her to hurry, hurry. She couldn’t wait. “Here we go,” the nurse said, wheeling her into the room. “Not too long now.”

  The solarium was a misnomer. Molly didn’t know what she expected, but the word made her think of green plants and new light spread out like a fresh summer sheet and gleaming wood floors. Instead, the solarium was a small, boxy room with a blue linoleum floor and orange padded chairs. It was filled with magazines and a card table and not a single plant. There was a woman in a red suit whispering to a man in a hospital gown. There was an elderly woman with her eyes shut. And there in the corner was Gary, and next to him, sitting close, was Suzanne, rocking a baby who seemed three times the size of the one Molly remembered. She stared at the
baby, trying to find something familiar. He had hair now, dark like Gary’s. She knew his eyes, she thought. And maybe his mouth. But would she have known him if he wasn’t on Suzanne’s lap?

  Suzanne bent down, whispering something to Otis, looking up at Molly with a look that made Molly suddenly scared: guilt.

  “Hey, look who’s here!” Suzanne said to Otis. Otis stared at Molly.

  Gary picked up the baby and gently settled him in Molly’s lap. Otis fussed. He stiffened, arching his back.

  Suzanne crouched down beside Molly, repositioning Otis. Otis’s hands clung to Suzanne.

  “Say Mommy,” Suzanne urged Otis, who said nothing.

  Otis looked at Suzanne. She tickled his chin, making him shut his eyes in pleasure.

  “He loves this,” Suzanne announced. She was talking really fast. She grabbed the baby’s little finger. “He likes this, too.”

  “And stuffed animals,” Gary said. “Oh, I think he wants his pacifier.” He reached for the baby bag, just as Suzanne did, brushing her hand, jolting his back as if she had burned him. Molly stared from one to the other. Gary and Suzanne both seemed uncomfortable. They were talking without looking at each other. Suzanne rummaged in the bag and popped a blue pacifier in Otis’s mouth, and when she sat back down, she angled her body toward Gary. Gary bolted up from the couch. Molly felt a prickling of fear. What was going on here? “Gary?” Molly said, and then Otis spat out the pacifier and began to wail.

  “I’ll take him—” Suzanne said, but Molly pulled back.

  “No. Leave him be,” Molly said.

  “Let me just get him to stop and then I’ll hand him right back—”

  “No.” Otis wailed louder. Molly felt desperate.

  “Oh, not like that—” Suzanne said, and Molly swiveled her body away from her sister.

  “I can do this,” Molly said sharply. “I can comfort my own baby.”

  Suzanne put her hands up and took a step back. “Be my guest.”

  Molly tried to rock him, but it made Otis cry louder. He flailed against Molly. “What’s wrong with him?” Molly cried. “Is he wet?”

  “He just wants a hug.” Suzanne picked Otis up from her arms, and Otis instantly calmed down. “You get to know these things by instinct,” Suzanne said.

  They didn’t stay very long after that. A nurse came to wheel Molly back to her room, letting her linger at the elevator. “Say bye-bye.” Gary lifted up Otis’s hand and waved it. The baby blinked at her. His lower lip flopped open. He’s trying to tell me something, she thought, and before she could figure it out, the elevator door opened and the last thing she saw before the door closed were Otis’s dark eyes, staring out at her.

  She fell asleep almost as soon as she was back in bed. She heard a voice and looked up, trying to rouse, and there was Dr. Price shaking his head at her. “It was too much for you,” he said, and then before she could argue with him, she fell asleep again.

  chapter nine

  Gary stared at his computer, his hand motionless on the mouse. Downstairs, he could hear Suzanne moving around, shutting doors a bit too loudly, turning up her music too much. Some punk rocker wailing about his cheating heart that was slashing him like a blade.

  Gary slammed down the mouse and clicked off the computer. That was it. He’d get out of the house. Get away from her. It was Saturday night. He could go see a couple of movies. Or he could go to the diner. Stay there until he knew Molly would be up and he could go to see her. Anything as long as he wasn’t within ten feet of Suzanne. He bolted up from his seat, determined, and came out of his room and as soon as he did, he smelled something wafting through the house, winding its way up to him. Garlic. Tomato sauce. His stomach rumbled and growled. He was suddenly starving.

  When he got to the stairs, Suzanne was waiting for him at the bottom. Her lips looked glossy, like she’d shined them up. He stared at them, stricken.

  Suzanne smiled. She tucked her hair behind one ear. “Want some dinner?” Suzanne said. “I made pasta.”

  “I ate,” Gary lied. The last thing in his stomach had been a stale piece of Juicy Fruit he had found in his pocket. He was so hungry he could have eaten six bowls of pasta, he probably could have eaten the cardboard box the pasta came in, but he wasn’t going to take the chance sitting at a table with her.

  “I made garlic bread, too. And salad.”

  “I said I wasn’t hungry,” Gary snapped. He hurried down the stairs, intending to walk right past her, but she didn’t move. He had to brush past her.

  “Everything go okay at the hospital today?” Suzanne said.

  Gary nodded and headed for Otis’s room. He was going crazy. If he was so anxious to hold someone, it had better be his son. He leaned over the crib. Otis kicked his legs as Gary picked him up. He nuzzled Otis, but then he looked up, and for a moment he was sure he saw Suzanne, leaning in the doorway. He blinked. The doorway was empty. He’d have to get out of the house. And he’d take Otis with him.

  Gary got Otis into his jacket. He got the baby carrier and had his hand on the door when he heard Suzanne call to him.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Suzanne said. Her voice moved in a funny way. Her expression looked complicated. “Can anyone come or is this a private party?”

  “We’ll be right back,” he said quickly, and then he stepped out into the cold, shutting the door even as she moved toward him.

  He headed for the Tastee. “Well, look who’s here!” the waitresses said when they saw him. Otis slept on the leatherette seat. Gary nursed his chocolate milkshake and fiddled with his french fries, swiping them through the ketchup and laying them back on his plate. He hardly ate anything. A couple came and sat in the next booth, holding hands, leaning over the table and kissing. “Maybe we should just go home,” the woman said, laughing, deep and throaty. Gary was suddenly furious at the couple. They made him feel heartsick, they were so happy. He put down money for the check and picked up Otis. He opened the door and walked outside.

  The neighborhood was dark except for a small square of blue light in Suzanne’s room. He carried Otis into bed, and when he came outside, there was Suzanne, in her blue robe, sleepy-faced and miserable, her hair rumpled, staring at him. “Are you just going to avoid me forever?” She grabbed for his sleeve. “Nothing happened.”

  “Everything happened.” Gary freed his sleeve and looked past her. “And it’s not going to happen again.”

  “Don’t you want to talk about this? We live in the same house. You can’t just keep sidestepping me forever.”

  “I’ve got tons to do,” he said curtly, cutting her off, and then he went upstairs to his office, turned on the computer, and fell instantly asleep in his chair.

  He woke with a start and stumbled into bed, and as soon as he hit the sheets, he was wide awake. He put the pillow sideways, the same way he did every night, to trick himself into thinking he was sleeping with Molly. He shut his eyes. “Molly,” he murmured, and suddenly he smelled Suzanne’s perfume. He saw her eyes, her hair. He felt her body, lowered beside his, the slide of her hair across his back. He bolted up from the bed, kicking the sheets to the floor. The bed was empty. The house was silent. He sat down in the chair by the window.

  He’d sit here until morning if he had to.

  The next day, on his way to see Molly, Gary, so sleepy he was stumbling, stopped and bought her vegetable soup from the Kiev. Her favorite. He was broke but he stopped at a jewelry store and bought her a silver bracelet, slim as a wedding band. “Someone’s quite a lucky girl,” the store clerk told him.

  When Gary walked into Molly’s room, she was turned away from him, looking out the window. Her skin looked gray and it hurt him to see it. Her hair was matted on one side and her face was puffy. “I come bearing gifts,” Gary said, forcing cheer, and Molly turned toward him, perking up, putting on a smile, too. He put down the cardboard cup of soup and opened it for her. Steam curls floated in the air. Potatoes bobbed on the surface.

  “Oh, my favorite
!” she said.

  Gary reached in his pocket and then set down the present in front of her. “And what’s this?” she said.

  He stood back from her, watching her take the gift from the bag and unwrap it. He had heard that lovers could smell betrayal on each other, that you couldn’t help but give faithlessness away with a glance, a look, a certain tone in your voice. But Molly’s face was glowing with surprise and pleasure. “Oh, my God!” She lifted the bracelet up, admiring it. She held up her wrists helplessly. “Got mine already,” Molly joked, showing him her plastic band on one wrist, the coil of IV tubing on the other. She set the bracelet on the dresser by the bed. “Well, I can look at it and love it for now. It’s something to aspire to.”

  “Have some soup,” he urged.

  Molly tried, but she could only finish half the soup. She yawned and stretched.

  “You sleep and I’ll stay here,” he told her.

  She shut her eyes and he sat there watching her for a while. He took the bracelet and opened the clasp and studied her arm. He couldn’t believe there wasn’t a place for it. Her arm was now so thin, the bracelet would probably fit on a lot of places beside her wrist. Finally, he slipped it on just under her right elbow. He felt a weird, hot kind of relief. He stepped back and looked at it. When Molly woke up, she’d see the bracelet, a silvery gleam on her arm. She’d remember he had given it to her.

  When Gary got home that afternoon, Otis was in the Portacrib in the living room, batting irritatedly at the colored plastic toys suspended above him. “What’s the matter, you don’t like your toys?” he said. Otis whacked a plastic yellow butterfly, sending it spinning. Gary could hear Suzanne in the kitchen, the rush of the water. He knew her routine. She must be doing Otis’s bottles by hand. “Let’s take a walk,” Gary said. Gary quickly got Otis dressed and into the Snugli. And then, as he was ready to go out the door, he called out, “Suzanne, I’m taking Otis out.”