“Apparently I am.”
“So then this wasn’t … planned?”
“No, of course it wasn’t planned,” she said, and laughed. I couldn’t get over the laughter. “It was a complete and total failure-of-birth-control surprise.”
“But I thought you were on the pill.”
“Well, sure, I was on the pill, but I was having some side effects, so my doctor said she’d give me a different pill, and then she called the wrong pharmacy for me, only I didn’t know, and when I went to my own pharmacy, they didn’t know what had happened but they said they could get it, and then I had to work late every night because the magazine was shipping and so I missed, like, just the first week, but I thought it would be all right, but then she said—”
“Sophie. Sophie. It’s okay. I get the idea. An administrative failure of birth control.”
“And totally not my fault.”
“Well …”
“Mom! It was not my fault.”
Except, darling, that there are other forms of birth control besides the pill. There are condoms, you know. But really—what’s the point in lecturing? Instead, I said, “So. What does this mean for the trip?”
“Well, I don’t want to go to South America and have a baby there,” she said. “At an orphanage? Are you kidding me?”
“And what about Whit? What does he think?”
“Well,” she said. “I don’t really know yet, because we haven’t talked about it. I think maybe he’ll want to postpone the trip until next year, and we can take the baby along, too. Then I think it would be fun—living in South America!”
“Are you going to propose that?”
“Propose what?”
“Waiting. For a year.”
“I think it would be better if he came up with that idea. Don’t you? Since he’s the one who hired the crew, he’s the one that’s going to have to figure out what everybody is doing next year. Don’t you think this is enough advance notice that they can change things? I mean, the trip isn’t for three months.” Then she got quiet for a few long moments. I could hear her sucking in her breath, the gravity of the situation hitting her. Then she said, “If he does have to go, that’s perfectly fine, too. I’ll be very mature and understanding.”
So that’s how it happened that she stayed in New York, turning down our offer to come home and wait in New Hampshire for the baby to be born. And that’s how Whit took off for South America with his film crew and his father’s friends’ money, a married man determined to follow his plan despite all the obstacles that had been put in his path.
I don’t say this to too many people—especially not the people in my family—but I feel some admiration for a person who can do that, who can be unwavering in the face of plans changing and people screaming and crying and threatening and acting as though everything has gone totally to hell.
And then I remember that it’s my daughter he’s disappointing, and I feel a little less sure.
SOPHIE AND I snuggle down under the covers and watch the last hour of Sleepless in Seattle, and then later we’re hungry so I get up and make us some soup and more tea. I’ve no sooner gotten in bed than my cell phone rings, and it’s Nicky with, “Hey, Mamalu. I just called home and Dad told me you’re with Sophie. He said there’s some kind of emergency. What’s going on?”
I fill him in, and he says, “So why isn’t Whit going to come back and take care of her?”
“He will when he can,” I say, and Sophie looks at me.
“Dad’s really pissed at him, you know.” He’s eating something crunchy while he talks, as usual. “I think he’d like to put a contract out on him.”
“It’s going to be fine,” I say. “Nobody’s going to put a contract out on anybody.”
“Yeah, well, he’s in some kind of sucky mood. I told him about the hiking I’m doing this weekend up in the White Mountains, and he said he doesn’t want me to go—get this—because he can’t have two children in mortal danger, especially when you’re not even there to do half the worrying for him. So what’s up with that? I can’t live my life because Sophie’s baby is giving her trouble?”
“Oh, Nicky. Just cut your father some slack. He’s working on his book and he’s crabby right now.”
“Yeah, he’s like, ‘Why is it always about life and death with you?’ He has no trust in me, Mom. He thinks I don’t have any sense.”
“He knows you have sense.”
“That’s what he said. I’m just going by what he told me. I’m supposed to sit in my dorm room until this baby gets born, apparently. Maybe I shouldn’t even eat these pretzels, ’cause you know, what if I choke on them, and then Dad would have a tough time.”
“Nicholas, let me just ask you something. Does everything have to be right on the edge for you? Could you maybe just do some winter hiking that doesn’t involve ice and mountain peaks and going out all alone to prove you can do it? Just for a bit?”
“I wasn’t going to be all alone anyway. Christ! What do you people take me for?”
“You forget that we’ve known you your whole life.”
“I think this is displaced anger because Whit won’t come home.”
“Displaced anger?” I can’t help but laugh. “Where did you get that from?”
“Psychology class. I do learn stuff here, you know.”
“I know you do. Listen,” I tell him. “I’ve gotta go help Sophie. You take care of yourself and try not to slip through the ice, okay?”
“You either,” he says.
AT SOPHIE’S insistence, I sleep in her bed next to her that first night instead of going to the living room ten steps away, but truthfully, I’m glad because it turns out that once the lights are off, I discover that I need to watch her every second. I don’t get much sleep at all; the radiators, controlled by some mysterious cold-blooded building superintendent who must think everybody is freezing, keep letting out blasts of suffocating heat and then making high-pitched clanging sounds, like Chinese gongs at the new year. The bed is small and hard and unfamiliar, and a slice of bright light from the street falls right across my face. But mainly I stay awake because I can’t seem to stop my mind from racing, and besides that, I just need to stare at Sophie’s face, which is as white as the moon, with dark smudges under her eyes. Even in sleep, she looks worn out. How can you be both tired and asleep? At one point I get so neurotic that I reach over and take her pulse while she sleeps, just for information’s sake.
I wish I knew how much blood she really lost, and how exactly she’s supposed to make more to replace it. And, even more important, if anyone is really doing anything to make sure that baby stays in its place. All those brave things I said to her: does she suspect that I don’t know what I’m talking about? The doctor had sounded so confident—but of course, it isn’t her daughter who might yet lose her baby.
Oh, this is not a good path to be going down, but I have no way of stopping myself once I’m on it. I feel like getting out of bed and going into the hallway and calling up Grant. This is just the kind of situation he’s so good at identifying as nonsense. But I can’t call Grant now. I’m mad at him, and besides that, I realize with a pang, there’s nothing he could say that would make me feel better.
So it seems like I spend the whole night alternately half dozing and staring at Sophie, and I get startled and anxious whenever she turns over in bed. I’m almost relieved when the first gray light comes around the shades and it means I can unkink myself and get up and start the day. But naturally as soon as I realize I could get up, I fall into a deep, overheated sleep where there are bad dreams waiting for me. First I’ve run away from home, and there is blood and a car and a baby crying somewhere in the distance and a whole bunch of ominous things that I can’t remember, bells ringing and alarms going off and a woman shouting. And when my eyes fly open, it’s eight thirty and Sophie is the woman who’s shouting. She’s talking on her cell phone, pacing back and forth, and she’s furious.
“No. It’s not like that at all! �
�� No, I have to stay in the bed the whole time. Yeah, like until May.… Yeah, you think it’s easy. You just try it.” She looks up at the ceiling and blinks rapidly and then she slumps down onto the floor and sits there leaning against the doorjamb, not facing me. When she speaks again, her voice is no longer angry, but it’s sullen. “Yeah, it’s great she’s here. Somebody needed to come take care of me, that’s for sure.… So how much longer do you think? … Good God, Whit. Not even if it’s an emergency? Well, yeah, she’s staying as long as she needs to. She’s my mom! … Okay. No, I know. I know. I will. All right. Yeah, you, too. Bye.”
She slams the phone shut, bursts into sobs, and comes over and throws herself on the bed. “I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!”
I scoot over and hand her a tissue, and she blows her nose and puts her head in her hands, still sniffling.
“Poor Sophie. It’s very hard,” I say.
“He’s a fucking idiot. Dad called it right. Whit cares more about his stupid documentary and those stupid orphans than he cares about me and his own baby. Do you know what he said to me just now? Can you fucking believe this? He said I should keep my chin up. My chin up! Is that something that a sane man would say to his wife who is bleeding and might lose their baby? ‘Keep your chin up’?”
“I know, I know. But, Sophie, so often men don’t know what to say. Women have been complaining about this for years. It may now be a national epidemic.”
“Well, that’s the understatement of the year! He never knows what to say! He’s a fucking spoiled rich guy who’s always gotten what he wants, and he’s never had to care about anybody else before! He’s emotionally stunted, is what he is! And oh, lucky me! I married him!”
“Sophie, honey, you—”
“Look,” she says, and turns on me then. “You are married to a saint, to somebody who knows what it means to love somebody. So nothing you can say right now is going to help me because you don’t know what it’s like to have to talk a man into caring about you. Daddy never would have left you when you were pregnant! He never would, and you know it.”
“Sophie—”
“He stuck right there by you the whole time you were pregnant, didn’t he? I bet when you had morning sickness, he would even hold your hair back for you when you barfed. You know what he told me? He said that when you were pregnant with me, you craved Hershey bars with almonds, and that he’d get up and go out every night and get you some because no matter how many he bought the night before, you’d find them and eat them all and then want more. And he didn’t even mind doing it. He was laughing when he told me about it, like it was just the cutest thing about you. He wouldn’t have taken any amount of money to go away and leave you then! He just wouldn’t have.”
He did do that, bought me Hershey bars with almonds and sat with me when I was sick. But he wouldn’t do that now. The years Sophie remembers are from when he was all about the family, when we were the highest priority. It seems like a fairy tale now. I look over at her, see how angry and puffed up her face is. Maybe I should tell her that now I couldn’t get her father’s attention if I dyed my hair purple and streaked through the house naked, and that all he seems to want from me lately is precious silence so he can do his work. She wouldn’t believe how many nights I take food up to his study and then go back downstairs and eat alone. Or how it’s even worse when we sit in silence together at that big old dining room table.
“I will never, ever get over this,” she says to me. “What he’s doing to me.”
“Well,” I hear myself saying lightly, “you might be surprised at what you can forgive and get over. Marriage is a long road, and along the way there are lots of things—”
“No, Mom, no. You don’t have any right to compare anything that has happened in your marriage with this. You just don’t. So don’t even try. You managed to marry the best, most committed guy in the universe.” She starts to cry and laugh at the same time. “Dad is so committed, he’s even boring. Maybe the most committed, boring person on the earth. But somehow even though you were so young, you knew that was going to be a good combination. How did you know? Just tell me that.”
[eight]
1977
I knew within four days of the wedding that I had made a terrible, awful, horrible mistake in marrying Grant.
It had seemed a good idea to have our trip across the country serve as our honeymoon. After all, he said, what could be more romantic than being alone together in the cab of a U-Haul truck, our wedding presents stacked in cardboard boxes behind us as we camped our way across America on our way to begin our new life? But here is what I learned the first week after the wedding: I’d married a control freak. A nose-drops-dependent, sniffling, geeky, miserly control freak.
First of all, there was the matter of the rental truck. He had to be the driver at all times; whenever I was at the wheel, he hissed and sucked in his breath. All these histrionics, despite the fact that I was an exemplary driver. And then the entertainment factor: he only listened to talk radio. All talk, all the time. Country music, the staple of the stations dotting the huge middle of the United States, made him ill. He couldn’t tolerate any static whatsoever from the radio; he got headaches. And when we’d stop for breakfast or lunch, he didn’t—or wouldn’t—ever engage waitresses in conversation, even those super-friendly midwestern ones who called him “hon” and tried to flatter him into chatting. He would just sit there blinking uncomfortably, looking pained as I talked to people, trying to make it seem like we were just any ordinary, happily married pair of newlyweds trekking our way to New York City.
And then there were the accommodations. We’d decided to camp rather than waste our wedding money on hotels. We’d need all the money we could save once we got to New York before I found work. I was fine with this, picturing us pitching our tent by lakes and in forests, staring into the campfire at night before falling asleep in each other’s arms. But apparently, Grant had some kind of safety fetish and could only consider staying at AAA-approved, concrete campgrounds—the non-woodsy kind with chain-link fences, on-site managers, and rec rooms (although naturally he wouldn’t set foot in an actual rec room, not wanting to talk to or even see other people on this trip). Campfires were out. So was sleeping in the nude. And he was far more afraid of mosquitoes and gnats than he was of killing us with lethal doses of bug spray while we slept in our tent. I lay awake each night next to him, my skin slick with Deep Woods Off—necessary, he said, to discourage the bugs from biting him, even if I was willing to offer my own skin for their snack time.
Oh, I could go on and on. And in my own head, I did go on and on, compiling a long list of our differences. Each day—as we covered the required three hundred miles so that we could get the U-Haul truck to New York in the required ten days—looking out at the flat, corn-riddled landscape, and listening to the soporific droning voice of talk radio, I sat silently in the passenger seat, clenching and unclenching my fists and plotting divorce.
I wondered how it would happen. Would I simply get out at the next town while he was using the bathroom in some fast-food place (he wouldn’t go to gas station restrooms, of course) and slip away across the highway, leap over the concrete barriers, and hitch my way back to LA? Perhaps I’d catch a ride with somebody driving a sports car, somebody who’d be thrilled to spend money on motels instead of saving every last goddamn penny by making us camp. Or maybe some kindly older couple would swerve over to the side and stop for me, and I’d go home with them and it would turn out they had a fascinating life story to tell me that would change everything. I can see in your eyes that you’ve married the wrong man, the woman would tell me. Why, when I met Bert here, he was so good at talking to me that I knew my whole life was going to be one amazing conversation after another. I didn’t care that we were poor. And you know why? We could really, really talk to each other.
As soon as I thought that, I opened my eyes and looked over at Grant. He was hunched over the steering wheel, frowning as he drove, and hum
ming some tuneless thing, the same four notes over and over again under his breath. Here it was, the height of the summer, and we were driving through Kansas, through heat and humidity, yet he was wearing black pants and white crew socks, and the pants were too short for him, so his skinny little ankles in their pathetic little ribbed socks stuck out. He scratched his nose and ran his hands through his hair and then started humming again. He’d forgotten to shave on one side, and he was squinting hard over the top of his sunglasses. I had always thought that the whole Grant shtick was just so adorable, the way he couldn’t be bothered to care about so many things because he was in his own little world, but now I felt nothing but despair.
“What are you thinking about?” I said.
“What?”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Oh.” He shrugged and smiled, a little sheepishly. “I don’t know. I guess I’m thinking about labor unions.”
“Labor unions. You’re really thinking about labor unions.”
“Yeah.”
“But what about them? Are you thinking about the people who belong to them, or their history? What is there to think about? Are you … counting them?”
He laughed. “Well. No. I’m thinking how great it is that they saved this country.”
I folded a map that was crumpled up on the floor at my feet. “Do you ever think about us? About our marriage? Or about what it’s going to be like when we get where we’re going?” I said slowly. “You know, our marriage.”
“No,” he said. “I figure that part will just take care of itself.”
“No, no. You’ve got it backwards. It’s labor unions that will take care of themselves. Us, you have to actually think about.” I looked out the window and felt my eyes stinging. What, what had I done?
Grant reached over and put his husbandly I-have-a-right-to-be-here hand on my knee. “Do you know where you want to stay tonight? Did you look at the Triple-A book?”
The Stuff That Never Happened Page 11
