by Lori Carson
I refuse to do it and he gets mad.
I try not to obsess about his wife. I’ve seen pictures of her. She’s a sultry blonde with wide-set eyes and long muscular legs. I keep seeing some part of her when I look at him, her long leg wrapped around his waist, her downturned mouth against his throat. I see her influence in the way he dresses. New words and expressions fall out of his mouth. As I listen to him talk, all I can hear is how I’ve lost him.
It’s almost a relief when I leave Gabriel’s apartment and return to mine.
After that, he stops calling.
The nights are the hardest. I can’t sleep or I have bad dreams. In one, I beat his chest in a rage, but he can’t even feel me. I cry my eyes raw. I wake up at three or four, and remember all over again. I lie awake, waiting for the sky to get light.
I’m afraid my misery will bleed into you, and I don’t want that to happen. I hope you’ll be stronger than I am, capable and brave, that you’ll feel a bit of the entitlement your father sees as his birthright. It’s an easier life for him.
Twenty
Weeks later I’m under the covers at three in the afternoon when someone rings the bell. My heart starts to pound; I’m not expecting anyone. I pull the pillow over my head and try to ignore it, but it sounds again. So reluctantly I get out of bed and say into the intercom, “Who is it?” My voice comes out whispery and ragged.
“You sleeping?” Alan asks.
I pull on my sweats and buzz him in.
He laughs when he sees me. Not in a mean way. I do look a sight. My hair is standing straight up and I haven’t bathed or brushed my teeth in days. I’m huge, too. It’s unbelievable that I’ve still got a month to go, because I look ready to pop at any moment.
Alan seems happy to see me, which makes me feel a little bit better. He launches into a story about a girl on the subway who smiled at him from Grand Central all the way to Seventy-second Street, but turned out to be smiling at someone else. The other guy, muscle-bound and from Jersey, asked Alan if he’d like a punch in the mouth.
“No way,” I say. “Did that really happen?”
“Oh, yes,” Alan says. “It happened all right.”
“What did you do?”
“I said, no thank you, and got the hell off the train,” he says, and we laugh. It feels really good to laugh. I realize I’ve gone five minutes without thinking about Gabriel.
“Anyhow,” Alan says, the story trailing off. “So, you all right?”
I look around the room. It’s a total mess. “Do you think you could hang out while I clean up a little?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says easily. He moves across the room toward my guitar.
I take a quick shower and start to put the place in order. It doesn’t take very long. Alan follows me to the kitchen looking for something to eat, but the cupboard is bare. The cats are on his heels, hoping he’ll fill up their bowl. “I have to eat,” he says. “Do you want to get something at the corner, or should we buy stuff and cook?”
We decide to cook, and do a quick shop at the Korean deli on Broadway. I feed the cats, and he makes us a couple of omelets with goat cheese and spinach. We toast a loaf of French bread in the broiler and break off big buttery hunks of it to stuff in our mouths. We drink fresh-squeezed orange juice and cut up a melon into large wedges. It’s the first real meal I’ve had in weeks and I’m stuffed.
“If Minnow’s not like fifteen pounds, I’m in trouble,” I say, leaning back in my chair.
“You’re not so fat,” Alan says.
“What’s happening with music?” I ask him, changing the subject.
He says there may be some session work coming up. Ideally, he’d like to find a tour. Paul Simon is reuniting with Art Garfunkel, but another guitar player we know seems to have that locked up. Chaka Khan might be looking for somebody. Alan knows her musical director. He grabs the guitar to play some funky licks. I think he’d be perfect for her band.
“Have you been writing at all?” he asks me.
“Not really,” I say.
But after he leaves I pick up the guitar. It’s comforting to slip into my own world, safe and dark and full of caves to explore. I don’t need Gabriel, I tell myself. My talent will be discovered and I’ll be rewarded with recognition, love, and approval. It might happen anywhere, at any time. The thought consoles me. I don’t have the slightest clue that it’s a childish dream.
Twenty-one
On Halloween the streets are filled with children dressed as little ghouls and princesses. I smile and wave to them as they go by the restaurant. One little girl rides on her father’s shoulders, her black curls bouncing, her crown askew. She laughs and her black-fringed eyes sparkle. Minnow, will you burst with happiness like that girl? I see you in every beautiful child’s face.
All the waitresses at the Café Miriam are in costume, too. I’m wearing cat ears. I’ve painted whiskers on my face and a black nose. I’ve got on a black body stocking and a tail. My pregnant belly seems part of my costume. I’m a mother cat about to birth a dozen kittens.
My fellow waitresses are sexy gypsies and nurses. Only Will, the bartender, conceals his identity. He is the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. He’d make a better lion, I think, with his barrel chest. He’s mixing drinks with his arms encased in silver cardboard. It doesn’t look easy.
Toward the middle of the afternoon, there’s a lull, and we’re all standing around the bar talking and teasing him.
Sofia says, “Uh-oh.”
And I look around.
Gabriel is coming through the door. Did I mention he liked to wear hats? Before he got married and moved to L.A., it was baseball caps. Now it’s a black fedora, tilted sideways on his head. I can tell he thinks it makes him look cool. Plus it hides his bald spot.
I meet his eyes and his gaze travels down to my belly. In my catsuit, there is nothing left to the imagination. He looks surprised, maybe a little nervous. I’m as big as a house now.
“He’s got a lot of nerve coming in here,” Janelle says under her breath.
But she’s the only one who says anything. We’re all waiting to see what he’s going to do. Nobody even asks him if he wants a table. He looks at us, staring back at him. We must look pretty silly, all in costume. For a second he’s got the beginnings of a smile on his face, but then it falls, and he turns around and walks back out.
Part of me wants to follow him down the street, but I stay where I am. I get a big lump in my throat that dissolves into tears. Sofia dabs at my face with a cocktail napkin. “Don’t cry,” she says. “He’s not worth it, and you’re going to mess up your whiskers.”
I smile when she says that, but for the rest of the day he’s the only thought in my head. I wonder if he’s at the apartment. I wonder how long he’ll be in town. I wonder if he misses me. Still, I don’t go to his place and I don’t call him. This may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I feel like an addict craving the drug. But I’ve started to realize that the longer I stay away from him, the easier it gets.
In the original 1982, I lose my mind. I drink myself into oblivion. I call him repeatedly and wait outside his door. I beg him to tell me why.
He grows bored with my drunken pain.
“I’ve told you why,” he says.
“But I don’t remember,” I say, sobbing.
“Well, maybe you should write it down.”
But there’s no way it’s going to happen like that this time. I’m pregnant. I don’t drink. I don’t call. I don’t wait outside his door.
I leave the restaurant in the late afternoon. There’s a light rain falling. I hold my face up to it and close my eyes. It seems to always rain on Halloween.
I get home in time for all the little trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood. I’m ready for them. I pretend to be afraid. I tell them they look scary or beautiful or funny.
They hold bags open, already full of candy, and say, “Trick or treat!”
I drop Hershey’s Kisses and miniature Milky Way
bars into the bags of ghosts and mermaids, superheroes, and clowns. Their parents stand a few steps behind, under half-open umbrellas. The mothers ask me when I’m due. Their smiles are welcoming.
Twenty-two
Alan comes with me to prenatal class. We make fun of everything. I don’t think any of the other women look as pregnant as I do. They’re mostly in their thirties. One is even in her forties. They seem superior and smug to me in their expensive spandex outfits, their well-groomed husbands in tow.
The woman who leads the class, Nicole, reminds me of an elegant racehorse. She says our babies will grow a lot in the last month and Alan and I look at each other with raised eyebrows and laugh. How is that possible? Already, I’m waddling like a beast. I’ve outgrown my maternity clothes. I can’t find a comfortable position in which to sleep.
One woman says she sleeps with eight pillows. Another says yoga has saved her life. I listen to everyone but feel I have nothing in common with these people.
Thank God Alan is with me. When we’re shown a video of a birth, he covers his eyes with his hands. I do, too, but peek through my fingers. I know somehow you’ve got to come out, but I can’t believe this is the way it still happens. You’d think with all the advances in technology and science, they’d have come up with something less barbaric by now.
Nicole talks about preparing for the hospital, what to pack in our bags, and when to know it’s time. She describes the pain management options and has us practice breathing. I fear I’m too distracted to remember half of what she says; I’m going to miss something important. But a woman who is having her second baby says no matter what you learn beforehand, once the baby starts coming, you don’t remember a thing anyway.
“That’s why we have our wonderful husbands with us today,” Nicole says.
I look at Alan and he smiles at me like a goofball. People in the class assume he’s my husband. Someone calls us a cute couple. He reaches out to pat me on the head, and I smack his hand away. I don’t know why I don’t love him like that. He’s the best friend I have and I count on him for so much.
The light is long and yellow as we walk back to my place. It’s a late November afternoon. Alan wants to stop for ice cream cones, so we do. We get brown bonnets. The chocolate shell cracks and falls apart faster than I can keep up. Soon I’ve got ice cream running down my arm.
At the apartment, I take my guitar out of Alan’s hands. “I’ve got a new one,” I tell him, holding the guitar awkwardly. My belly prevents my cradling it normally. The song is called “Still True.”
Baby, all I’ve ever looked for is a safe place,
All I’ve ever longed for is your warm embrace,
All I’ve ever wanted is you.
Take a good look and you’ll know
It’s still true
“Damn. That’s a nice one.” The cats are at Alan’s feet. He reaches up from scratching their heads to take the guitar from my hands.
“You could play it this way.” He starts to strum it.
“Oh, I love that.” I sing the melody over the song’s new feel. It’s got that eighth note in the bass thing now, like a lot of songs in the years after “Every Breath You Take.” We play it a few times through.
“I definitely hear cello on it,” I say.
This is before we knew Marianne Mercurio, the cellist who one day plays on “Still True” and many of my other songs. In the original 1982, I go to CBGB’s to see Shelly Lee Rowan play and Marianne is with her. She’s sitting on the right side of the stage, cello between her legs, wearing a black leather cap. Her long straight hair swings back and forth with every frenetic push and pull of her bow. I think she’s the coolest girl I’ve ever seen. Years later, when we’re making the first record, my producer tracks her down. This is back in the day of big-budget records, before the majors ran out of money.
Marianne becomes the third member of our band.
“Yeah, cello would be extremely cool,” Alan says now.
Twenty-three
My parents come into town and take me to lunch at the coffee shop on Broadway. They love diners and coffee shops because there’s a lot to choose from and the food is predictable and inexpensive. BLTs and spinach pie, meatloaf sandwiches, and tuna melts.
As a young family, we sometimes attempted to go to other restaurants. My father would tell us that we shouldn’t drink the water or eat the bread before he’d looked at the menu, because if the prices were too high, we were going to leave. It had actually happened more than once, and we’d walked out, trailing behind him feeling mildly humiliated. When my sister got to be a teenager, she got him back by always ordering a lobster or a sirloin steak.
My father reads his menu now and doesn’t say much. In fact, he says nothing at all about the enormous elephant in the room, his soon-to-be-born granddaughter. I can barely fit behind the table in the booth, but it’s as if he doesn’t notice. At first, my mother fills the space with small talk about distant relatives I barely know or remember. When my father interrupts her, she stops midsentence.
“Lise,” he says, “what’s your plan?”
“What do you mean, Dad?” I ask.
“Obviously, you’re not going to be able to keep doing what you’ve been doing once the baby is born,” he says.
“Why not?” I ask, dreading the answer.
But he ignores my question. “Your mother and I think you should move back home. It’s time to get serious about your life. We’ve let this go on too long already.”
“Dad, I’m twenty-four years old,” I say. Though instantly I feel sixteen, defiant and doubting myself.
The waiter interrupts to ask for our order. My voice shakes with emotion as I give him mine.
But I have a job. I have a place to live. I have money in the bank. I know it won’t be easy to take care of a baby on my own, but other single women have managed it and so will I.
After the waiter walks away, I tell him that.
“Dad, it’s going to be fine. I’ve thought it all out. I can do this.”
He doesn’t believe me. Of course he doesn’t. I understand the deal I’m making. He looks at me as if from a long distance. If this is what I choose, then there’s nothing he can do. The consequences will be mine, and they won’t be pretty. It’s a hard life I’m making for myself. All of this is in his eyes.
“Look, here’s our food,” my mother says. “Doesn’t everything look good?”
I’m too upset to eat and stare out the window. My mother resumes chatting, as if nothing has been said. I feel bad and then worse.
The waiter comes by and asks if anyone needs more coffee.
“No, thank you,” my mother answers for us.
“I have to go,” I say. “I have to be at work by four.”
“How can you be on your feet in your condition?” she asks.
“I’m hostessing. It’s not so bad.”
I waddle around to their side of the table to kiss them good-bye.
“We can drop you off,” my mother says. “Let Dad get the car. It won’t take a minute.”
“I feel like walking.” I kiss my mother’s cheek and pull away before she can kiss mine. I head out the door into the cold afternoon.
With every block I put between them and myself, I feel better.
Twenty-four
Later, at the Café Miriam, I’ve got the big reservation book open in front of me. I’m greeting customers and seating a few people. It’s a pretty slow night, so mostly I’m just watching them walk by the restaurant.
Hostessing is a breeze compared to waiting tables, though the money isn’t as good. Most people don’t think to tip me as I seat them. The ones who do are older women who take pity on me because I’m pregnant, but never give more than a dollar. If I weren’t pregnant, it would be married men doing the tipping, slipping a five into my palm, as if I were a stripper and my hand a G-string. They think it’s a subtle way to get your attention, and that their wives don’t notice. News flash, guys? Not very subtle, a
nd your wives don’t miss a thing.
In my current state, the married men hardly look at me. Not only because I’m pregnant. I’ve also lost the sheen of love, that happiness you radiate when you love someone and he loves you back. The wives still look me up and down to assess the wardrobe (man’s button-down shirt over a pair of black maternity stretch pants). I see them glance at my left hand to check for a ring.
I’m still feeling disoriented after the lunch with my parents. Or maybe it’s you, Minnow. I’m a little dizzy, a bit sick to my stomach. But I get through the shift. At least I don’t have to wait around until the money’s figured out and everything’s cleaned up, as I would if I were waitressing. After the last customer is seated, I hang out at the bar for a few minutes, have a Coke with Will, and say good night to the girls. By ten-fifteen, I’m on my way home.
The perspiration at my hairline cools in the chilly night. Being pregnant is like having a heater in my belly; I’m always too warm. My bones ache and I’m tired, but I walk briskly. Columbus Avenue is alive with people spilling out of all the bars and restaurants. They laugh and push one another, drunkenly. I cut over to Amsterdam.
West Seventy-first Street is desolate as I approach my building just before West End Avenue. I can hear my own breathing and footsteps in the quiet. I dig through my bag for my front door key and go to turn it in the lock. I’m just about to get inside when someone grabs my arm and spins me around.
The guy facing me looks deranged. He’s a street person, definitely a drug addict. I don’t understand how he’s managed to sneak up on me.
I don’t fight him as he roughly pulls my bag off my shoulder. He pushes me hard, and I fall back and down, against the front door. He takes my wallet out of the bag and throws the rest onto the sidewalk.
“Do you have any jewelry?” he asks.
“No,” I say, but no sound comes out.
“Bitch,” he says. His eyes are popping out of his head. I try to keep my own head down. “That’s right. Don’t look at me. And don’t get up. Sit there and count to a hundred before you go inside or I’ll come back and cut you.” His saliva strikes my arm. I think of the phrase spitting mad. I don’t look at him.
