Coming Back to Me

by Caroline Leavitt

  “Feels like Alaska in here all of a sudden. You still pissed at me?” he said.

  Suzanne ignored him. She opened a drawer and pulled out her sweater, her good sunglasses, her good wool pants. He cocked his head, watching her quizzically. “What are you doing?”

  Suzanne turned to look at him. At one time, it used to almost hurt her to look at him. She had fallen in love with him the first second she had laid eyes on him and he was still the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life. “I’m not going away with you.”

  “Don’t be like that. Don’t keep punishing me. I can only take so long off from work.”

  “I’m not punishing you. And I didn’t mean I wanted you to stay with me.” Suzanne was exhausted. “I want you to go back to California or wherever else you’re going. Without me.”

  Ivan tried to touch her, but Suzanne pulled back. “No,” she said.

  Ivan blew out a breath. He leaned against the bureau, watching her. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Don’t do this. Is it the kid? You want me to apologize about the kid again, I’ll apologize. But he’s fine. You want to get mad at someone, go get mad at the son of a bitch who rammed your car, who hit and run and didn’t look back. That’s whose fault this really is. That’s who’s the terrible person. You scared about those cops? They were just blowing smoke at you. They walk away from robberies, you think they’re going to go after this? You think they’re really going to call that agency? Believe me. I dealt with an ex-wife. I know how these things work and it’s all smoke screens and mumbo jumbo to get you good and scared so you’ll toe the line.”

  “I am scared.” Suzanne bent down to make sure she hadn’t left anything under the bed. She found a pair of shoes and pulled them out, and then stood up again. “You didn’t even ask how he made out at the hospital. If he’s all right.”

  Ivan looked impatient. “Okay. How did he make out?”

  She shook her head. “He’s fine,” she said curtly.

  “How long are you going to hang me out to dry over this, Suzanne? You want me to admit I fucked up? Okay, I fucked up. Now can we just get past this? The kid is fine. You just told me so. God, you didn’t used to hold a grudge like this. It’s not good for you, Suzanne. It’s not good for us.”

  Suzanne got on her jacket from the closet. “His name is Otis,” she said. “And it’s not just him.” She slung her bag over one shoulder. She looked at him. “What’s Ann’s favorite toy? What’s her favorite bedtime story?”

  Ivan stared at her. “What is this? Why are we talking about Ann?”

  “I’m talking about her. Your daughter. You never do. Do you have a picture of Ann? What’s her favorite food? What’s her favorite TV show? You don’t know, do you?”

  “I know you.” Ivan’s voice was quieter than she had ever heard it. “And I know you don’t really want to do this. You and me. We’re the same person. All these years. You couldn’t stop loving me now. No matter what I did. What you think I did.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Oh, no?” He got a strange smile on his face. “Aren’t you the woman I’m going to marry—the woman I should have married back when we were seventeen? Aren’t you my muse?”

  “You’re not listening to me.”

  “You want to live in Jersey? Hell, I don’t care. We’ll live in stinking Jersey. You want to have a kid? Okay, we’ll have a kid.”

  “I don’t want a kid with you. You don’t even carry a picture of your own daughter. You never talk about her. At first I thought it was because it hurt you not to be with her, but now I think it’s because you don’t care. I bet you don’t call her, either. You don’t know the first thing about her, and she’s your own flesh and blood.”

  He reached for her and she shoved him away.

  “I’m so stupid,” Suzanne said. “Screw me for not paying attention to how you treat the people who love you. Screw me for not seeing how you don’t love anyone back, except maybe yourself. Screw me and screw you.”

  “What is with you? What is it you want?” he said.

  Suzanne put her hand on the doorknob, turning it. “I know what it is about you, now. You’re right. I do know you. I know you can’t stand to be alone. You never could. I had to come with you to every gig. You couldn’t go to sleep unless I was there in the bed with you. We were always together, but it had nothing to do with love. It didn’t then and it doesn’t now. You have to have an audience. That’s why you married Patty, I bet. And that’s why you went to find me. You don’t really see people, do you? You don’t really care.”

  “Suzanne, it worries me when you talk crazy like this. Maybe you should just calm down a bit. You want me to go out and get you something? Hot tea? A drink of something?”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me. I only thought you did.” Suzanne opened the door.

  “No, it’s not good-bye.” Ivan’s voice got quieter and quieter. “You’ll call me. You always do. I know you’ll call me. You could never stop loving me, no matter what I did,” and then Suzanne walked out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

  Suzanne stopped at the pay phone to call her client who had said she had an apartment to unload. She was so drained, she leaned her head against the phone. She shut her eyes. “If you like it, you can take over the lease,” her client told her.

  Suzanne saw the apartment a half hour later. It was the worst apartment she had ever seen, maybe even worse than ones she had had in California. One big dark and musty room with a slanted floor. The one window in it was small and it looked out on a parking lot. She heard a sneeze, as loudly as if it were right in front of her.

  “Tissue-paper walls,” her client said apologetically. “The neighbor had allergies, but the bright side is they’re seasonal.”

  Suzanne looked around. She didn’t have much choice, or much time. There was enough space for a small single bed, a table, a chair for her work. Well, what else did she need? It was available immediately and it was so cheap even she could afford it.

  “I’ll take it,” Suzanne said. “I’m moving in right now.”

  The woman gave her an odd look. “Well, I guess you can do that. It’s your place,” she said cheerfully and handed Suzanne the key.

  After the woman left, Suzanne sat on her floor and tried to think what to do next. She couldn’t stop thinking about Otis, about Molly. Already she missed Otis so much she thought she was going through withdrawal. What could she have been thinking to think she could leave with Ivan and not look back? She kept thinking she heard Otis crying. She kept feeling Otis’s breath, warm and sweet and soft as a cat’s. Who was watching him? Who knew him better than she did? Who spent more time with him? Did they know what songs he liked to hear? Did they know he liked to be burped on the left shoulder and not the right, that he didn’t like strained peaches, but apricots were okay? She had been thrown out of Gary’s and Molly’s lives for jeopardizing Otis, and maybe she could understand that, maybe she would have flown off the handle the same way, but the bottom line was she loved that kid. He loved her. And she couldn’t do without him.

  She looked at the corner of the room. The Portacrib might fit there. She looked at the tiny kitchen, with the tiny stove. It still could boil Otis’s bottles. No matter where she looked, she thought of Otis. She swore she heard him in the room.

  Suzanne stood up heavily. She couldn’t stand it. She didn’t have a phone yet, so she walked outside, two blocks to the pay phone. She rested her head against the silver phone and dialed.

  The line rang three times. She tried to slow her breathing, to ease up her grip on the phone. Please, she thought. Just let me get a word in edgewise.

  “Hello?” said Gary. His voice sounded tense, exhausted. In the background, she heard Otis crying, which made her grip the receiver tighter.

  “Please. I told him to go, to never come back. Can I just come over and explain? Can I just see Otis?”

  Gary hung up the phone. Static popped and fizzed in her ear.
>
  She knew Gary wouldn’t let her see Otis, but he couldn’t keep her from walking in the neighborhood, from seeing the baby by accident. Accident, she thought. Accident.

  Accident. It hummed in her mind. Every day, she took her time. Every time she saw a blue stroller, she dashed over, checking to see if Otis was inside it, but it was always a baby she didn’t know at all. A mother who would look at her curiously, and then Suzanne would have to retreat. She kept thinking maybe she could run into him and his new caretaker, she could explain and the woman would let her just hold him. “It’ll be our little secret,” she might say.

  She was even desperate enough to think she might appeal to Molly. They were sisters, after all. They would always be sisters, no matter what. You couldn’t change that. She used to be able to talk Molly into anything-even forgiveness. But as soon as she got to Molly’s floor, she felt a chill. She got halfway into the door when Molly rang for the nurse. “Get out,” Molly said.

  “If you want to see me, I’ll be in the solarium.” Suzanne’s voice seemed a wisp. “Every day. From ten to two. Just so you know.”

  “With Ivan.”

  “I’m not with Ivan anymore.”

  “Until when?” Molly asked wearily. “Why did you even come here in the first place? What was it? Money? A place to live? To hide out? It wasn’t for me, was it.” She lay back on the pillow.

  “It was for you,” Suzanne whispered.

  Molly shook her head. “Just go already. I’m tired.”

  A nurse came in. “Something you need?” she said.

  “This visitor’s disturbing me,” Molly said. “Don’t let her in here again—”

  The nurse put one hand on Suzanne’s back. “Please,” she said, and Suzanne turned around. “Ten to two—” Suzanne said quietly. “And I did come for you.”

  Suzanne sat in the solarium for hours at a time, nursing hot tea, reading magazines, waiting. Every time a nurse came in, she felt a spark of hope, but the nurse never came for her. She didn’t dare go back to Molly’s room, but some days she simply stood out in the hall by the elevators waiting for Gary. When he saw her, his face set. “She doesn’t want you here. She told you that. I’m telling you that. We don’t want to see you. Just go back to California. Go back to Ivan.”

  “Ivan’s gone. I told him to go.”

  “Good. You go, too.” He turned away from her.

  “I’m not going anywhere!” Suzanne screamed after him. “I’m here every day!” She shouted so loudly a nurse came over to shush her.

  It made Suzanne crazy not to see the baby. She kept walking Molly’s neighborhood trying to catch a glimpse of him. She walked and she walked until her feet hurt, but she never once saw anyone. She never even saw a curtain flutter.

  Not seeing Ivan was a different matter. For a while, she braced herself every time the phone or the doorbell rang. She half expected to see him following her. And it was strange. She expected to feel more wrung-out about all of it, but instead what she felt was this odd kind of relief, almost like closing a book she had loved and read and now was finished with. Ivan didn’t really love anyone. He ran out on her. He ran out on his wife. And he ran out on his little girl.

  It was only sometimes, late at night, when she did think about him, and then it hurt. But the Ivan she thought about then was the boy she had fallen in love with at fifteen, the rocker who held her in his arms and made her feel like she was worth something, like she was special. The boy who sang to her and told her she was his only one forever. And that Ivan had been gone a long time ago. And so had that Suzanne.

  She began coming to the hospital at different times, hoping to catch Otis there.

  She had no pride. She didn’t care that the nurses saw her sitting in the solarium every day, not moving, completely alone.

  Gary was trying to stop Otis from crying. Otis was shrieking and carrying on, flailing his arms and legs, and nothing Gary was doing seemed to help. Gary tried the bottle and Otis batted it away. He checked the baby’s diaper and gave him a bath and even put on music, and still Otis wailed. “What’s wrong?” he kept asking, and Otis kept crying. “Think of how I feel,” Gary coaxed.

  Gary had a lot to do today, too. He had the names of three women who might work as baby nurses, though Emma, thank God, had told him not to worry, that she would be more than happy to watch Otis. Theresa had piped in, saying she’d be happy to help out, too. “Just ask,” she said. He had to go food shopping and do a wash and clean the house a bit, it was such a pigsty. He looked like hell himself. He was wearing the same flannel shirt and jeans he had been wearing for two days. He hadn’t even taken a shower, let alone shaved, and he knew without even looking in the mirror that there were big dark circles under his eyes, like bruises. How had Suzanne managed? How did anyone? The doorbell rang, and Otis screamed louder and Gary cursed, peeking out the window. No one was there. Already this morning, a messenger had come by, carrying a small red thermos. “What’s this?” Gary said, looking at the thermos.

  He opened the note. I got you Holy Water! Don’t even ask how I did it! Love and kisses, Ada. Gary sighed and rolled his eyes. Ada. She meant well but this was too much. He had taken the thermos and tossed it right in the trash, and then two minutes later, he fished it out again. Well. You never knew. He was just about to try to figure out some lunch when the phone rang. “You got it?” Ada said.

  “Thanks.” He was too exhausted to explain.

  “Listen, Gary. I have something else to tell you but I have to whisper because I don’t want to get caught—”

  “Ada, I’m really busy—”

  Her voice singsonged. “Guess who’s getting fired because he sent his girlfriend a top-of-the-line computer setup that belonged to the company? Guess who racked up a long-distance phone bill so high he was hauled into the head honcho’s office and dragged over the coals for it? And guess whose girlfriend, when asked if he could come out there and live with her while he tried to start fresh, said thanks but no thanks, she liked things the way they were?”

  Gary was surprised how blank he felt. He didn’t care anymore about what Brian had or hadn’t done to him. It didn’t matter anymore.

  “And guess who management’s talking about taking his job? Go on, guess.”

  “Ada, I don’t know—”

  “You—” Ada said breathlessly. “They’re talking about you!”

  “Me? They fired me!”

  “No, they didn’t fire you, Gary. Brian did. I didn’t want to tell you, you had so much on your plate, but you wouldn’t believe the things he was saying about you. That all your ideas were his. That you were lazy. That they were better off without you. Ha. Things have been hitting the fan since you left. He hasn’t been able to produce a thing and everyone knows it’s because you’re gone and he can’t steal your ideas anymore.”

  “What?” Gary felt amazed.

  “His job, Gary. I bet you can have his job.”

  Gary tried to think straight. “No. That can’t be right. And anyway, how can I work now?”

  Ada’s voice turned even more conspiratorial. “Gary, I’m like this little fly on the wall. No one notices me half the time because I’m a secretary, but I see things. I hear things. You don’t know what they’re willing to do to get you back. You could tell them three days a week to start and they’d go for it, I bet. Things are shit here! Everything’s crazy. Brian really fucked up but good. They’re going to call you. I heard them talking. And you take the job and then get me as your secretary and give me a nice raise. Now how about that?”

  Gary felt suddenly light-headed. Brian’s job. They could have money in the bank. Paid health insurance, not that COBRA shit. And even if he only had the job for half a year, it would be impressive enough so he could quit and freelance anywhere he wanted. “I don’t know. Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I just will take it.”

  “Atta boy,” Ada cheered.

  He hung up. He felt better. Now he’d take his shower. Maybe he’d make some lunch. C
all Molly. Maybe things were turning around.

  The doorbell rang again. It had better not be Suzanne.

  He pulled open the door. A prim-faced young woman in a nondescript blue dress, carrying a clipboard, nodded at him. He was used to this. People canvassing for city council or school board or God knows what else. People wanting you to contribute money to causes he had never heard of. He’d cut her off before she could even open her mouth. “This is a bad time—” he said curtly, but the woman shook her head.

  “Gary Breyer?” she said, and he nodded. How’d she know who he was?

  “I’m Tonette Thomson, the caseworker assigned to your file and this is an unannounced home visit. As you probably know, a complaint has been filed against you and I’m here to speak with you and visit with Otis in his home.” Her voice was formal, stiff.

  Gary felt as if he had been struck. His case. A complaint. He couldn’t move. He was suddenly super aware of his dirty clothes, his matted hair; his growth of beard suddenly itched. And, of course, Otis was wailing.

  “State law requires that you have to let me in to check Otis’s safety,” Tonette said quietly.

  Gary abruptly stepped back, trying to soothe Otis. He saw suddenly the way Tonette was looking at him, taking him in, narrowing, as if she were looking for fault. She stared at Otis so long, and with such concern, that Gary felt suddenly scared. “He isn’t usually like this—” Gary said quickly.

  “I’m sure he’s not,” Tonette said, but she looked at him and frowned. She came into the house, looking around. “You understand the seriousness of the allegation? Leaving a child unattended in a locked car? And then with the accident? He suffered—” She flipped through some paper on her clipboard and then frowned. “Contusions,” she said finally. “Head abrasions.” She shook her head, scolding him. “Tsk,” she said.