Until the Real Thing Comes Along

by Elizabeth Berg

  Ethan looks at me, a bit murderously.

  “Go back home,” I say. “We’ll eat. We’re all starving.”

  “Go back home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Patty …”

  “It’s just another false alarm,” I say. “Although—” I swallow, lean my head back against the seat, close my eyes. “Whoa.”

  “That’s it!” Ethan says. “We’re going. And I’m timing this.”

  “Well,” I say weakly. “Good. That’ll show it who’s boss.”

  Ten hours later, Ethan sits on one side of me, my mother on the other. Mark and Elaine went home hours ago. My father got kicked off the maternity unit forty-five minutes after we arrived for trying to boss the nurses around. He ferried food up and down for everyone but me, which is grossly unfair since I’m the one who’s doing all the work. I don’t see what one taco would hurt.

  We are in the birthing room, which has cheerful yellow curtains on a window framing a view of heating ducts. There is a pastel-colored quilt on the wall opposite me that I liked very much when I arrived and would now like to rip apart with my teeth.

  My mother has been telling me over and over that I’m doing fine. Now, having just learned that the amazing increase in the level of pain means I’m “progressing nicely,” she tries to distract me from my agony by telling me what she saw on the way to the hospital. “We went past the Richmond place, you know that beautiful estate for sale over by the lighthouse?”

  “Two point four mil.” I grit my teeth, grunt loudly, then say, “Excuse me.”

  “That’s fine, honey, you make all the noise you need. Scream if you want to, you just go right ahead.”

  “I’m not screaming!”

  “Well, I didn’t say you were, I just said to do it if you want to!”

  “I don’t want to!”

  A nurse pops her head in the door. “Doing okay? Are you sure you don’t want anything for pain?”

  “No!! Thank you.”

  “No?” my mother asks. “Honey?”

  “No!” I say. “I don’t … it might hurt the baby.”

  “It doesn’t hurt the baby. They wouldn’t give it to you if it would hurt the baby!”

  “Oh, please. Remember thalidomide? DES?”

  “Well—”

  “I’m not—Ow!!”

  “It could help, honey.”

  “Oh, God, this is a big one, now.”

  “Okay. Concentrate,” Ethan says, from the other side of me. “Big cleansing breath.”

  “Mom,” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you just … talk?”

  “Okay,” she says. “All right. So … the Richmond estate. It is such a lovely place, and the grounds! They have a big wrought-iron gate, you remember, and it was open partway and it just looked like the loveliest thing to me, you know? That open gate? It seemed so full of promise, I always feel that way about open gates, that they have this promise. Of course, it’s a very fragile promise. We don’t know, you know. We don’t know.”

  “Mom?” I say. She looks close to crying.

  “I’m awfully tired, honey. I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave this to you and Ethan. All right?”

  I nod. “Yes. I’m sorry. I should have sent you home a long time ago. Thank you.”

  She stands, smiles at Ethan. “You’ll call right away, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ethan,” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you leave.”

  “I’m not leaving, Patty.”

  “And where is Robert?” my mother asks.

  “He’s down in the main lobby,” Ethan says. “You take the elevator right next door, he’s right down there.”

  “To the lobby, then,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  She comes back to me, kisses my forehead. “You’re fine. You’ll do just fine. You have that baby, and then you call your mother.”

  “Okay.” I watch her go out the door, then tell Ethan, “Go with her.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, but don’t make her feel—”

  “I won’t. I’ll be right back.”

  While Ethan is gone, Dr. Carlson comes, asks if he can check me. “Can you wait?” I ask. “I’m having a contraction.”

  “Sure.” He takes my hand. “You’re doing very well.”

  “Uh-huh.” I am dying.

  “I think you’re awfully close. Where’s Ethan?”

  “Took. My mother. Downstairs.”

  “Let me check you, Patty.”

  “Still hurts.”

  “Yes, but let me check.”

  I turn onto my back. He is so amazingly cruel. I focus on the ceiling, then squeeze my eyes shut. And then hear a long, low growl I recognize vaguely as being myself.

  “Oh, yes, uh-huh,” Dr. Carlson says, at the same time Ethan walks back in.

  “What is it?” Ethan asks.

  “She’s ready.” Dr. Carlson goes to the door, leans out into the hall. “Nancy? Let’s get her into a delivery room. She’s going to go.” He smiles at me. “We’re going to get that baby to you now, Patty. I’m just going to change into clean scrubs.”

  Ethan, who is already in scrubs, sits in the chair my mother vacated, takes my hand. “This is it!”

  “Ethan.”

  “Yes?”

  “Come here.”

  He hesitates, pulls his chair closer, leans in toward me. “Yes?” I take a handful of his shirt, pull him closer still. Then I whisper, “You have to take me home now. Okay? Don’t tell them. Just take me home, right now. We’ll come back for my things later.”

  He is silent for a moment. Then, “Patty?” he says. “You’re having a baby.”

  “No,” I say. “I’m not. And I want to go home, I really don’t feel well.”

  “Okay, listen to me. You’re dilated almost all the way and you’re 100 percent effaced. Okay? You’re going to have the baby now. We’re not going anywhere but the delivery room.”

  “Ethan.”

  “Yes?”

  “You are so letting me down.”

  “Oh, Patty.” He kisses my hand.

  “I want to go home.”

  “And you will. But first we’re just going to do this one little thing, okay?”

  I shudder hugely, grit my teeth, push down hard in a way that seems completely independent of me.

  “See?” he says, quietly, apologetically.

  I nod.

  Behind him, the doctor and two nurses appear. “Okay, Ethan,” one of the nurses says, “if you step back, we’ll get her on the cart.”

  “Just a minute,” Ethan says. And then, softly, to me, “I love you.” I start crying, but I’m very happy.

  “I’m right here,” Ethan says. “I’m going to stay right beside you. Okay? We’re going to the delivery room now, and I’m going to stay right here beside you.”

  I am moved onto the cart and brought into the delivery room, where it is so bright and cold.

  “I’m freezing,” I say, my teeth chattering. My legs are quivering. I see the white socks on my feet and I feel sorry for them.

  A huge mirror is positioned above me.

  “Can you see?” Dr. Carlson asks, from behind his mask.

  “Yes. Yes.” No.

  “Okay, Patty, I want you to push now.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Push!” he says.

  “NO!”

  Ethan leans down, his eyes to mine. “Everything is fine. You’re just fine. But we were wondering … can you push a little?”

  I push. But not a little, and not because he tells me to. I push because that is all there is in the world, and I push like what I mean to do is turn myself inside out. After a while I feel some bony softness slide down, then slip out of me. “Oops,” I say, and then hear a cry. I look up into the mirror, see myself, my head on a pillow with a blue paper pillowcase. Down by my feet are some medical hands, and I see part of
a live baby: a bent arm, fingers clenched into a fist. It is wrapped quickly into a blanket by the nurse.

  “I think I’ll let Ethan say what sex it is,” Dr. Carlson says. Ethan lets go of my hand, walks to the end of the table, looks into the blanket. There is a moment of quiet, a year of quiet, and then he speaks. It is so soft, but I hear him say, “Hello, Marilyn.” Then, with a tenderness I would not have thought possible in earth-bound humans, he gives her to me. Her wet head is cupped; her quivering chest is calmed. What have my hands been doing all my life before this? I see now that they too have just been born. I unwrap the blanket, stop breathing.

  24

  “ ‘Marilyn’ is a very good name,” Muriel Berkenheimer says. She is standing beside me, looking through the nursery window at my daughter, sleeping deeply before us. “I’m glad you settled on that one.”

  “I used to have a girlfriend named Marilyn,” Artie says.

  “You say that about every girl’s name you ever hear,” Muriel says. Then, to me, “He does. Every name, it’s ‘I had a girlfriend with that name.’ ”

  Artie shrugs. “I had a lot of girlfriends, Muriel.” He pokes at her a little with his elbow. “Jealous?”

  “That’s it, I’m jealous.”

  I’m so happy to hear them carrying on in the old way. Artie looks good; he’s doing far better than he was told he would. “I decided, what do they know?”he said, when we visited in my room. And Muriel said, “It’s true. He was lying around one day, miserable—well, let’s face it, we were both miserable, and he says to me, Oh the hell with it, Muriel, let’s go get some tomato plants and put them in.’ So we did. Next day he feels better, day after that, better still.”

  “Big Boys,” Artie said.

  “Pardon me?” I asked.

  “Big Boy tomatoes, you can’t go wrong with them.”

  “Anyway,” Muriel said, “Dr. Singer says he can’t believe Artie. But here he is. He’s doing just fine.”

  “Well, for the time being,” Artie said.

  “He’s doing fine,” Muriel said. “And if you’re going back to work anytime soon, we’d like to take a look at a few places. You could bring the baby, babies love me.”

  Now, tapping on the glass softly, Muriel says, “Good-bye, Marilyn.” As though in response, the baby’s lips move into an O shape, then relax.

  “I told you, they love me,” Muriel says. Then, lower, “I’ve always had big breasts, maybe that’s it.”

  “Oy,” Artie says. “Let’s go.”

  I watch them walk away, then head back to my room. I’ve got to get my things together; I’m going home today. Ethan will pick me up in an hour. We’ll have dinner at my parents’ house, and then I’ll go back to my apartment and start this new life.

  When I am packed, I bring Marilyn’s isolette into my room, watch her sleep. I think about a story I heard on the radio one night, about how a man with Alzheimer’s disease created a beautiful rock garden, worked hard on it all his adult life. A short time after he developed the disease, he forgot that he was responsible for his own creation; he thought his sons had done it. Each day, he would walk out into it saying, “This is nice. They did a good job.” Last night, I told Ethan about the story, and I was crying and saying, “Oh, God, isn’t it terrible?”

  He got very quiet and then he said, “You know, Patty, I haven’t told you this because I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. But I want to tell you now. I had an uncle who had Alzheimer’s, and I used to visit him and my aunt a lot when I was around fifteen or so. I remember the room he was in before he died—they’d converted the dining room into a sickroom, and it was so bright in there, and so big. There were supplies stacked up all over the place, so neatly, and also things like seashells here and there, small bouquets…. I always had this funny feeling of it being such a pleasant place, but a kind of hell, too. At that point, Uncle Jim couldn’t even talk, and he had this kind of masklike face.”

  I began crying harder and Ethan said, “No. Wait. Wait.”

  I wiped my eyes, lay back in the bed, took in a shuddering breath. “Okay. What.”

  “Well, the thing was … I was there one day and my Aunt Beck was talking about him, and about things they used to do together. And then she took one of Uncle Jim’s hands and held it and looked at him; and she said, ‘We had a love, didn’t we, Jim?’ and he looked up at her and … smiled, you know, he smiled, and I knew it was hard for him and I knew it was so rare. And I remember looking away from that, it seemed too much to see, the … brightness of that kind of love. I think it was such a testimonial, Patty, that’s what I want to say to you. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone, that kind of trial. But I think if anyone can endure this, with grace, and with spirit, and with a kind of gentleness, it’s your parents. These kinds of things, whether it’s Alzheimer’s or AIDS, they’re awful; but they’re also the way that we can show our own greatness to each other.” He shrugs, sighs. “It seems pretty rare that we ever get to choose what will prove our love, really.”

  They wheeled Marilyn in then, red-faced and hungry, and I put her to my talented breast, soothed her.

  Then I looked up at Ethan. “Then the way you see it, it’s like the guy who did that rock garden gets to … receive it, again and again. To see it new, every day.”

  “He does.”

  “Well, that may be wonderful for him, in a way. But think how his wife’s heart is broken every time he shows her how he doesn’t even remember doing it.”

  “Maybe broken. Maybe strengthened. Maybe even with her pain, she is glad. About what he still has. And about what she can give him—is willing to.”

  I stared at him, blank-eyed.

  “I know, I’m blathering on and on,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “You make me feel much better.” And I began sobbing, catching the tears so they wouldn’t fall on Marilyn’s head.

  Now I sit imagining that my mother may do well for a long time, just like Artie. Or she may progress rapidly to a dementia that makes her surprised to see me with a baby every time I come over. In which case, will she not herself be a happy recipient, over and over? And is this not infinitely preferable to losing her all at once, say, to a heart attack? I don’t know, but I think so.

  My phone rings, and when I answer it, I hear Ethan say, “I’ll be there early; is that okay?”

  He will walk down the hall to my room, and the nurses will say, “Come look, that’s the one.”They think he’s so handsome and they’re right. They think I’m so lucky, and they’re right about that, too. The man I love is gay, but he loves me back. I don’t get to have the partnership I dreamed of for raising a baby, but I get to have a baby. Still Ms. Runner-up, I guess. It’s true that there is some pain in coming close to something, and then not quite making it. There is also a lot of hard joy.

  I look at my watch, lean down into Marilyn’s isolette. She has awakened and now lies quietly, waiting for whatever might come. I open my purse and take out a picture, hold it above her, watch her seem to focus on one of the figures. “That’s your daddy,” I say. “He’s coming to get us right now.”

  I start to put the picture away, then stop, look at it again. It is a picture of Ethan and me, the only one I had for a long time, and one I’d forgotten about until recently. It was taken in my apartment, not long after he told me he was gay. He’d been over for dinner with Elaine and me, and he was getting ready to leave. He and I were standing at opposite sides of a doorway, leaning against the jambs, our arms crossed. And then, I remember this, I reached out toward Ethan at exactly the same time that he leaned in toward me. That’s when Elaine took the picture. I am smiling, my face lifted toward his and full of leftover hope. You can only see part of Ethan’s face, but I remember exactly what his expression was: sorrow and love, an equal mix. I’m not sure about all we might have intended, moving toward each other that way, but there we are, met in the middle, me and Ethan, for a kind of eternity.

  I put the picture back in my purse. Then I ki
ss Marilyn’s cheek, and let my finger slide into her open hand, watch her hand close and hold on tight. I think I’ve always known that she’d be the one to guide me.

  Epilogue

  In three weeks Marilyn will be nine months old. I finally live in a small house by the ocean, which I bought with the earnings of a pretty spectacular sale I made. Marilyn’s room, where I rock her now, is painted a butter yellow; and her curtains feature happy ducks, blue ribbons tied lazily around their necks. It’s a warm summer day, and both of us have our eyes closed as we move back and forth, listening to the familiar creak of the chair.

  I am thinking about my mother, about how this morning when I went over to visit she was out sitting on the back steps, wearing only her slip. My father had been in the bathroom, and he came flying out, red-faced and distressed, at the same time that I found her outside like that. We stood before her, unsure as to exactly what to say—we are still unsure, at such moments, though what usually works best is to say nothing, to simply move on to the next moment. But this time she spoke first. She looked up at us, smiled radiantly, and said, “Oh, well, then, this is wrong, isn’t it?”

  “Honey …” my father said.

  She got up and straightened the back of her slip, then said to me, “And who is this beautiful child?”

  “It’s Marilyn,” I told her. “Your granddaughter.”

  “Of course it is,” my mother said, and reached out to take the baby. Marilyn leaned into my mother’s shoulder, put her thumb in her mouth, reached up for a piece of my mother’s hair. My mother looked at me then, and in her eyes was a piece of her old, confident self, the woman who could quiet any crying baby, the woman who, when it came to children, always knew the right thing to do. She was a builder of card houses extraordinaire, a constant tender of small wounds to the knee and grievous ones to the heart. She carried Marilyn inside, cooing to her, and Marilyn took her thumb out of her mouth to coo back.

  My father looked at me. “I know,” he said. “I’m going to get some help. Someone’s coming today for an interview.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just want to keep her here. For … you know, as long as I can.”