The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

by Rebecca Miller

  ‘Hi, Dot,’ said Pippa. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Blond bunny bounced out. Pippa looked at Chris, a laugh in her throat.

  ‘I better go talk to your mom.’ Pippa smoothed her shirt and went into the kitchen.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said.

  ‘Pippa. The man is thirty-five years old. You are … whatever you are. It’s none of my beeswax.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were here.’

  ‘My car is at the shop.’ There were tears in her voice.

  Chris was waiting outside for Pippa when she went to her car.

  ‘I guess I’m going to pack,’ she said.

  Pippa drove back to her house. Herb’s car was there. When she walked in, he was stirring Ovaltine into a glass of milk. He looked exhausted.

  ‘I am so sorry it went like this,’ he said.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Pippa. He walked up to her and put his arm around her. ‘I’m sorry. I lost control of it. I – I care for you so much.’

  ‘It’s all so tired,’ she said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This whole … situation. We should just fast-forward to the divorce.’

  She walked back into the bedroom and packed a few things. Why couldn’t she feel anything yet? Most of her nice clothes were in storage, so she took a few pairs of jeans, her favorite boots. Shirts. What clothes do you need when you’re thrown on the trash heap?

  He tried to help her with her bag, but she ignored him, rushed it to her car. Once she got into the driver’s seat, she realized she had forgotten her car keys. She smacked the steering wheel with a curse, then ran back into the house. The kitchen was empty now. She searched the room wildly for her keys. She had to get out before Herb walked back in. At last she saw them, chucked behind her morning coffee mug. When she drank that coffee, at eight that morning, she’d thought she was a happily married woman. As she snatched the keys off the kitchen counter, she glimpsed Herb’s shoe on the linoleum. His foot was in it. She walked around the island of white Formica and saw him lying unconscious on the ground, a dark stain on his trousers where he had wet himself.

  *

  Herb was in the intensive care unit of the Ford Memorial Hospital, in a curtained-off room crowded with blinking machines, his mouth covered with an oxygen mask, a long, hollow plastic thread stuck into his wrist with a needle. Clear liquid dripped into the thread from a collapsed plastic bag hooked onto a metal stand. Ben stood at the end of the bed. He had driven up from New York. His eyes were wet behind round glasses.

  ‘So I don’t understand. You were in the car and you came back in, and he was on the ground?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Pippa said, straining for the modulated tones of motherhood.

  ‘Why did you come back in?’

  ‘I forgot my keys.’

  ‘Where were you going?’

  ‘Ben, I don’t really see how –’

  ‘I’m just trying to get it all straight.’

  ‘Does it matter if I was going shopping or to the hardware store or –’

  ‘He just seemed really fine last time.’ He was weeping. Pippa put her arms around her boy. Dear Ben. When she thought of Grace, on her way from the airport, her stomach tightened. But it had to happen. Grace had to say goodbye to her daddy.

  Dr Franken came in. Only a few years older than Ben, with a round face and a slight lisp, this was the doctor they sent in to sympathize with the patients and their families, to try to stem their confusion. He had come in several times now to explain, first to Pippa, then to Ben, and to both again, that Herb had suffered a massive stroke, his brain was submerged in blood, he was living on the oxygen being pumped into him, it was the family’s choice as to how long he should remain in that state and when he should be released into the stratosphere. But this time, Dr Franken had a different message to convey.

  ‘Ms Moira Dulles – I believe she is a friend of yours, or of the family?’

  ‘Of my husband,’ said Pippa.

  ‘She’s a friend of yours,’ Ben said.

  ‘Not anymore,’ said Pippa.

  ‘Well,’ said Dr Franken. ‘She’s a patient here, she was admitted with chest pains a few hours ago –’ Pippa just about stifled a laugh.

  The doctor looked up.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I think she got a call, or someone told her, about your husband’s stroke.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  ‘She wants to visit Mr Lee. She wants to visit your husband. Now. I actually saw her today, because I am a cardiologist. She is … extremely distraught. I am sorry to bother you with this, but I had to ask.’

  ‘She can come in for five minutes,’ said Pippa.

  Moira walked in and tossed herself on Herb’s bed like a sack of sour laundry. Ben looked at Pippa, perplexed. Pippa rolled her eyes.

  Later, in the visitors’ lounge, she found herself fetching a cup of sweet tea for Moira, who, in her hospital gown, wrists bandaged, looked like she was fit for a lunatic asylum.

  ‘Oh, Pippa,’ she said, taking the steaming cup of tea. ‘It’s like the gods are punishing me.’

  ‘Stop being such an egomaniac and drink your tea.’

  ‘Please, please, please forgive me.’

  ‘Forgive you for what?’ asked Ben, sitting down in front of Moira.

  ‘I … I can’t,’ said Moira.

  ‘Ben, your father and Moira were in love. That’s why I was leaving.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, Pippa, I swear to God I will jump out a window if you don’t forgive me. I was so stupid, so blind, so selfish, so –’ Moira had gotten off her chair and was kneeling now. ‘Please!’ she said. People were staring at them over their newspapers.

  ‘Okay. I forgive you. Get up,’ hissed Pippa.

  Moira got up and flung herself onto the nearest couch.

  ‘You do not forgive her,’ Ben said.

  ‘You’re right,’ Pippa said. ‘I don’t.’ She sat back and sighed. ‘Why do I always end up with the crazy women?’

  ‘How could Dad do that to you?’

  ‘He was afraid of dying. He fell in love. It made him feel alive. I was … not altogether there at the end. I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t you even care?’

  ‘How can I compete with that?’ She waved her hand at Moira.

  It was then that Grace appeared, far down the hallway. She ran toward them, looking young and frightened. Ben walked up to her, and they embraced. ‘Where is he?’ asked Grace, casting a curious eye on Moira.

  As Ben led his sister into Herb’s curtained room, a nurse whispered to Pippa that she had a phone call. She went to the high desk at the nurses’ station.

  ‘Oh, Pippa.’ It was Sam.

  ‘Hi, Sam.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘Herb had a stroke. He was having an affair with Moira. She called and told me the whole thing this afternoon. Of all people, you are the last one this should be happening to.’

  ‘Thanks, I guess.’

  ‘I just want you to know that I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too, Sam.’

  ‘I mean, really.’

  She sucked in her breath. So strange to hear him say it out loud. Exhaling, she said: ‘Oh, Sam …’

  ‘I’ll come to see you later.’

  ‘Okay.’ There was a pause. Through it, Pippa saw her life with Sam skidding toward her inevitably, like a runaway sled: the intimate outdoor wedding, a violet halo of flowers balanced on her head. In Sam’s big, country kitchen, Pippa bending down to heave a large leg of lamb out of a steaming oven while Sam paced in his study. The artist’s wife at last. It felt like something soft and heavy had been laid on her chest. A large bag of sand, perhaps.

  ‘Sam?’ she said quickly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t want to make butterflied lamb … anymore.’ There was a silence. ‘Do you under
stand what I mean?’

  *

  Hours later, Pippa and Grace got into Pippa’s car. There wasn’t room for all three of them to stay overnight in the room with Herb, and Ben wanted to be the one. The idea was to have a few hours’ rest, then return to the hospital.

  ‘Why did Ben get to stay?’ asked Grace.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Pippa. ‘He seemed to want it the most.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ asked Grace. ‘How did you measure that, exactly? Do you have some sort of love-o-meter?’

  ‘We’ll rest for a few hours, and then we can –’

  ‘Who’s been smoking in this car?’ asked Grace, a suspicious look on her face.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Pippa vaguely, feeling as though she’d been caught.

  ‘Yuck.’ They drove in silence for a while. Then, in a whisper, ‘Was it Daddy?’

  ‘No, no …’

  ‘If he started smoking again, maybe that’s why he …’ She folded in on herself, knees drawn up to her chest. ‘So his brain’s just dead, just completely dead?’

  ‘That’s what they’re saying, honey.’

  They arrived at the house. Pippa opened the car trunk and took out the bag she’d packed that morning. A moth fluttered by Pippa’s face as she walked to the front door. It made her think of those sticky white tents, like cotton candy with worms in it. The larvae must have popped. Pippa remembered Chris. She missed him.

  ‘Good night,’ Grace muttered the moment they walked into the house. She walked down the hall, to Herb’s study, and shut the door without looking back.

  In her room, Pippa pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. It was better to be dressed in case she needed to go straight back to the hospital, she thought. Then she lay down in the bed. The fine cotton sheets felt noxious to her now. She thought of all the lying that had gone on in this bed in the past weeks. Why had he bothered to lie? She got out of the bed, sat in the small armchair in the corner, and lit a cigarette. She heard a soft knock and looked up. It was Grace.

  ‘My God, you are smoking.’

  ‘I’ll stop soon.’

  ‘But I’ve never seen you smoke in my life,’ said Grace, coming into the room and sitting on the bed.

  ‘I know,’ said Pippa. She took another drag and inhaled defiantly, then stood up, took one of the decorative plates off the wall, and stubbed the cigarette out on it. Grace looked at her mother as though she’d gone insane. Pippa shrugged and sat in the chair again, her legs folded beneath her. For once, she wasn’t afraid of Grace’s disapproval. She felt she’d been dismissed, and was remaining in the family as a consultant. No, of course. Mother hood is forever. But what about if your child can’t stand the sight of you? Do you just linger on, simpering, hoping for a change of attitude?

  Grace sniffed. She was weeping. Pippa walked over to her and sat beside her. To her surprise, Grace leaned in to her, buried her head in her chest, and sobbed. Pippa stroked her daughter’s head. ‘I’m so sorry this had to happen to you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not why I’m crying,’ said Grace. ‘I’m crying because I’m mean to you all the time, and I hate it. I don’t want to be, I really don’t.’

  Astonished, Pippa took her girl’s face in her hands, kissed her cheeks. ‘I love you so much,’ Pippa said. Poor girl, she didn’t know what sickness had been passed to her through the women in her family. Mother to daughter in a line as long as Pippa had lived, and maybe further, maybe past Grandma Sally, to Sally’s mother, and her mother before her; the chain of misunderstandings and adjustments, each daughter trying to make up for her mother’s lacks and getting it wrong the opposite way. Some families were cursed like that. ‘There is so much,’ said Pippa, ‘I wish I could tell you, but … I really don’t know how.’

  Grace put her finger to her mother’s lips. ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I just want to be your friend, Mom, while we still have time.’

  ‘I would be honored to be your friend,’ said Pippa.

  ‘Not honored,’ said Grace. ‘Just happy.’

  ‘Okay. Just happy.’

  ‘Can I sleep with you?’ Grace asked. Pippa felt a wave of almost excruciating happiness flush through her. She felt dizzy with it. ‘Of course, sweetheart.’ Pippa lay beside her daughter as Grace’s eyes closed, her breathing deepened. Grace had wept in her arms. Imagine! The unfamiliar certainty of her daughter’s love filled her with ecstatic disbelief. An hour passed. Pippa wasn’t tired. She felt she should go back to the hospital. She would wait another hour. They would call if anything changed. She gazed at Grace, her young face so intent, even in sleep. Her brave little girl. She hoped there was still time to mend things between them. She heard a car pass by the house. Then it backed up, and white light swept through the bedroom. She looked out the window to see who it was. It was Chris. She switched off the bedroom light, walked into the kitchen, and opened the door. He was already standing there.

  ‘I saw your light on, I wanted to see if you needed anything. My mother has a friend who works in the ICU; that’s how we found out.’

  ‘My son is with him. The idea is I’m supposed to be sleeping, but I can’t.’

  ‘I could drive you around a little bit.’

  ‘Don’t you have to work?’

  ‘I’m off till five.’

  ‘Maybe just for half an hour.’ She went into the house, tiptoed down the hall, and peeked into her bedroom. Grace was asleep, huddled under the duvet. Pippa wrote a note, propped it up on the bedside table beside Grace, took her cell phone out of her handbag, drew her sweatshirt off the back of a kitchen chair, and walked outside. Chris was already in the driver’s seat.

  They drove around Marigold Village for a while. Pippa called the hospital to check on Herb, made sure they knew to call her cell. Then she looked out the window and stared at the wooden houses with their slanted roofs, the American flags drooping sleepily, as if resting for the night. ‘I can’t believe I ever lived here,’ Pippa said.

  ‘It’s a weird place all right,’ said Chris. He drove her past the convenience store, through the mini-mall parking lot where the fish man parked, to the river. He turned the engine off but left the headlights on; immediately, hundreds of white moths were whirling inside the columns of illuminated air, their wings flapping desperately, as if feeding on the light.

  ‘They hatched,’ said Pippa. They sat like that for a long moment, looking out at the moths.

  ‘You said your father was a minister,’ said Chris. ‘Did he ever pray with you?’

  ‘No. I went to his church every Sunday. But he wasn’t praying with me.’

  ‘Do you … anymore?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know if I believe in anything, but I still pray. It’s sort of automatic.’

  ‘What do you pray for?’

  ‘To be good.’ She laughed. ‘It sounds so childish when I say it out loud.’

  ‘It’s the only thing to pray for. The rest is wish lists.’ There was something about him – so hard to put into thoughts – something genuine and transparent that she had only seen in children.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. He reached over her to pull open the latch of her door, then pushed the door ajar. His arm brushed the tops of her thighs. She got out. He came around to her side, took her hand, and led her to the back of the truck. There was a little door there. He opened it and drew her inside the orange shell. A match flared. He was lighting a candle. She could see now that there were several candles fixed on saucers along the wall and windowsills of the low plastic dome. He lit them, one by one. She shut the door so the candles wouldn’t go out. The floor was covered in brown plush carpeting. A thin mattress was rolled up neatly and made a tidy couch. He patted it. Pippa sat down on the mattress ticking. He knelt in front of her.

  ‘Do you want to pray for your husband?’

  She felt irony pressing in on her.

  ‘It’s hopeless. His brain is dead.’

  ‘Not for his brain. For his soul.’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know
how to do that.’

  ‘I don’t, either,’ he said. ‘Let’s try.’ Chris took off his shirt. She had forgotten his tattoo. Jesus was in the room with them now. His fierce black eyes burned out of Chris’s chest; his intricately drawn wings arched up over Chris’s shoulders. Chris closed his eyes, clasped his hands, and looked at the ground. Pippa stared at the image on her friend’s chest, and it stared back at her, unblinking, all seeing, awesome. This was not any Christ she had known. This was elemental, crushing divinity. She felt as though this truck was standing at the edge of space; she could not imagine anything beyond this moment, so foreign and yet so familiar, repellent and irresistible.

  At last, Chris looked up at her, his face above the other face. He moved toward her. With deliberate, calm movements, he guided her off the rolled up mattress, pushed it so it flopped flat. She crawled over to him. She lay down. As he kissed her, she felt her mind fill up with him and nothing else. Candles glimmered behind his head. His hands were very warm. Her eyelids were heavy. There was a slowness in her now, a torpor, like a drug in her veins. She was slipping further and further into the moment until she felt herself at its very pit, where there were no images, only one color, only red, behind her closed eyes. She felt his hand on her sex. She opened her eyes. The tattoo loomed over her; the wings of the Christ seemed to spread wide and real above her, pulsing up and down, making the sound of two dry hands rubbing against each other as they brushed the sides of the plastic shell. This can’t be real, she thought. And then, out of nowhere, a pleasure ballooned from her sex, swelled to fill her body until it burst, the sensation running down her legs, and she cried out, her head falling lifeless on the mattress, her body lank as the neck of a dead swan. Sadness trailed behind the pleasure like the tail of a comet. Grief and rage shot out of her mouth like flames. He held her head between his palms as she sobbed.