Authors: Renee Manfredi
“You’re not that good-looking,” she said. “Thank you, anyway, for your apology. Was that an apology?”
“Yes,” he said. “And add to that a salute to your bravery.”
He saw her reach for something in her purse, and was astounded when she pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights and lit up as confidently and easily as if they were sitting in a bar. “Bravery? Is this the nasty Jack coming back?”
“No, I mean it,” he said, and reached for one of the cigarettes. The smoke curling through his lungs felt somehow therapeutic. “It takes guts to say something like that. To cut away the pretty wrapping and see the crap inside.”
Anna raised an eyebrow. “So to speak.” She took a deep drag off the cigarette. “I suppose I should go back in there and tell them I’m sorry. But I don’t want to say more than that. Never ruin a perfectly good apology with a cheap excuse. Even if there is a cheap excuse. My motto, anyway.”
“You should absolutely not apologize,” Jack said. “It was good to shake them up. You’re right. There’s nothing about this illness that’s okay.” He paused. “Except maybe one thing.” He held out his cigarette. “Being terminally ill means that nothing else can lead to my premature death.”
A nurse walked in, her nose wrinkled in a rabbit-like way. “There is absolutely no smoking in here!”
“Yep,” Anna said. “We’re on our way out.”
Jack followed Anna outside. “Let me buy you a drink,” she said, and nodded to what looked like a sedate little fern bar across the street.
“Sure, I’ll let you. But only if you let me buy you a drink next, and I get to choose the next bar.”
“Deal,” Anna said. They walked in and Anna ordered them a round of tequila shots with martini chasers.
“You go, girl. There will be no beating around the white-wine spritzer bushes here,” he said.
“That’s right. Either you’re drinking, or you’re drinking lemonade.” She clinked her glass against his and downed the shot in one smooth gulp. “And by the way, to you I
will apologize
.”
“Oh?” Jack said, and worked the Cuervo down in three sips. He glanced over and saw the bartender smirking. Just to spite him, he shot the martini, slammed the glass on the counter, and nodded for another.
“I lied before. You
are
that good-looking.” His eyes were remarkable, Anna thought. Green with flecks of gold and blue and brown, mottled as river stones.
“Ha,” Jack said, cupping his chin in his hand. “A face that launched a thousand quips.” He reached for a bowl of pretzels on the bar. “You should see the man I’m in love with. I am pond scum next to him.”
“I did see him.”
His heart clenched, and he almost whirled around on his stool looking for Hector when he realized she assumed he meant Stuart. He nodded, and let it go. “Do you suppose our loved ones are done sharing?”
She gulped the rest of her drink. “We should probably get back. I didn’t tell my son-in-law where I was going.”
Jack’s mood sank a little at the phrase son-in-law. Still, that man was either closeted or bi, he was sure of it. “But you and I are bar-hopping.”
Anna put some money on the counter. “I’ll have to take a raincheck, I’m afraid.” He looked so dispirited that Anna was taken off-guard. She wouldn’t have guessed he had this in him.
She stood, walked toward the door. Jack followed. “Was this really your last meeting?”
“It was. I was just filling in, anyway, doing a favor for a friend.”
They stood at Anna’s car. He took a business card out of his pocket. “All my phone numbers. If you don’t let me take you for drinks, I’ll be very upset. Call me.”
Anna put the card in her purse. “I will,” she said, knowing the instant she said it that she never would. She saw in his expression that Jack knew, too.
“Well, maybe you’ll change your mind and come back next week.” He drew a martini glass in the dust on Anna’s car.
“I won’t change my mind. You can’t imagine how glad I am to be done with this.” She paused. “Listen, I’m not much into bars, but I would love it if you would stop by for drinks. Your partner too, of course.” What was she doing? The last thing she wanted right now was company, especially this man, whose nastiness was probably too close to the surface to make the occasion comfortable. She was too tired and edgy lately to cater to anybody’s sensitivities. Besides, she couldn’t believe he had any real interest in socializing with her.
Jack, for whom even the smallest goodbye these days was painful, said,
“Yes, we’d love to,” understanding Anna’s invitation was only partly in earnest, and understanding his acceptance of it was composed in equal parts of curiosity about her gorgeous son-in-law, guilt for being so nasty earlier, and some inexplicable spark he felt between them.
Anna gave him directions to her townhouse though he didn’t write them down. From the faraway look in his eyes she doubted whether he’d remember.
“Oh, here come our loved ones now,” Jack said. “Looking ever so stricken, empty, and bereft. Ain’t life grand?”
Marvin and Stuart walked up to Anna and Jack.
“We’ve been invited for drinks, sweetie,” Jack said, linking his arm through Stuart’s. Stuart smiled warily. Marvin looked at Anna then cut his eyes away to study the ground.
“How nice,” Stuart said. “But I think we should be heading home.”
“Why?” Jack said. There was nothing at home.
“Just one drink somewhere,” Anna said. “Or, come to my place.”
Jack checked Marvin’s response, but he was unreadable. Marvin’s arms were crossed, his hands balled into deliberate fists, as though he didn’t trust what they might do. His attention was on the hospital’s entrance, glancing over every time the door opened or closed.
“Maybe next week,” Stuart said.
“Except that there is no next week,” Jack said petulantly.
“Some other time then,” Anna said.
At home, Anna heard the television blaring before she opened the door, some awful MTV screeching of an amped guitar and heart-stopping bass. Marvin trailed in behind her.
“Flynn?” Anna called. She walked into the TV room and found a teenaged boy slumped on the couch. He looked vaguely familiar. “Oh. Who are you?”
“Jeremy. I deliver your newspapers.” He sat up, put on his sweatshirt. “Your neighbor asked me to watch Flynn until you got home.”
“Where is she?”
“Flynn? I think she went in to take a nap.”
“Where’s Greta?” But instead of waiting to hear his answer, she walked into her bedroom to check her answering machine. The light was blinking.
“I think I’m in labor,” Greta’s voice said. “Jeremy said he would watch Flynn until you got home. Can you call Mike? I mean, can you keep trying? I don’t know where he is.”
Anna dialed the number for Boston General—Greta didn’t say which hospital she was going to—she wasn’t there, or at the next two. “Drive that boy out of here, will you?” Anna said, as Marvin headed toward Flynn’s room. “I mean, will you drive him home? Pay him. Here,” she said, and handed him her wallet. “And can you turn that music off?”
Marvin blinked at her with a blank expression, as if he was new to the language. “What’s going on?”
“Greta’s in labor.”
“Already?” he said. “I thought she was just in her fifth month.”
Anna nodded, and when someone in the ER at Brigham and Women’s picked up her call, and after Anna lied and said she was next of kin, the operator said yes, they’d admitted Greta. “Can you patch me through to her room?”
Anna handed Marvin her car keys, and pointed at the babysitter boy.
“Okay. Is Greta all right?” Marvin asked.
Anna shook her head, walked away from him and peeked in Flynn’s room. The bed was empty, still neatly made. She stepped in, spotted Flynn, asleep in some sort of good-witch or angel costume—an angel, she saw now, from the wings—on the windowseat. Flynn had plugged in Christmas candles. On the steamer trunk where Flynn kept her clothes, she had set up a crèche that had been Hugh’s mother’s. Where had she found that old thing? Anna didn’t recall moving in any holiday decorations when she rented this place.
Greta finally answered her phone.
“It’s me,” Anna said quietly. She went back into the hallway, closed Flynn’s door.
“I had the baby,” Greta said. “It was a little girl. She was too small. They couldn’t do anything to save her. They’re saying she’s dead.”
“Oh, Greta,” Anna said. “Is Mike with you?”
“No. I can’t find him. Nobody can find him. He’s not answering his cell.”
“I’ll keep trying his numbers,” Anna said, and sat on the floor, her back against Flynn’s door.
Greta was crying. “She looks perfect. Tiny, but perfect. Do they ever
make a mistake?”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“I mean, is it possible that she’ll come back to life? You hear all those stories about children being under water for half an hour, then end up being fine. Children are much more resilient than adults. I named her Stella. She’s a bright little star.”
Greta sounded heavily medicated. “I’m sure the doctors did everything they could,” Anna said. “It might help if you hold her. Did they let you hold her?”
“I’m holding her now. I’m re-warming her. It hasn’t been that long, she could still wake up.”
“Is there a nurse in the room with you now?”
“Christ, they won’t leave me alone. They want me to give her to them. But she’s mine.”
“Do you think I could speak to one of the doctors in the room?” Anna said.
Greta began sobbing. “Not you, too. I thought you were my friend. I know what they do with babies. I know they’re going to cut her open and experiment. She’s getting warmer. Why can’t everybody just be patient?”
Anna waited for Greta’s crying to subside then said calmly, “As soon as Marvin comes back with my car, I’ll come over.”
“No. Don’t. I want to be alone.”
“Let me help you,” Anna said. “Let me be with you.”
“You can’t help me. You can’t possibly understand.”
“I’m a mother, too.”
“You’re a mother who never wanted her child. I want my child. Dead or alive, she’s my daughter.” Greta hung up.
Anna took a deep breath. She was so ready for this day to be over. She dialed Greta’s home number and left an updated message for Mike on their machine. The bastard. Greta would be better off without him.
She crept back into Flynn’s room. The girl hadn’t stirred. Anna sat and watched her as she slept, the soft light of the Christmas candles spilling over Flynn’s gorgeous face. Anna imagined that Flynn must have been a beautiful baby, a Botticelli angel with her dark curls, round, dimpled face, and deeply pigmented bow lips. Only Poppy had those lips; probably a recessive gene. Every now and then Anna caught a glimpse of her father’s
family arranging themselves in Flynn’s expressions. A certain intensity in her look, a pursed half-smile that Anna was sure belonged to her great-grandfather, a tailor in Poland, though she had never seen more than a blurry photo of the man. One of these days she’d go through her things—assuming she still had all those old boxes—and kick up the dust on the family relics, talk to Flynn about her Jewish heritage, her Ashkenazi bloodlines. Though what did she know of it? Her father, the Jewish Buddhist, had responded to Anna’s adolescent questioning: “We are of the Ashkenazi strain, the tribe of rabbis and scholars. The Sephardic Jews are rug sellers and general nose-pickers. That’s all I know, that’s all you need to know.” Maybe she would enroll Flynn in Hebrew classes at a synagogue. The dear doomed child, Anna thought, then alarmed herself by wondering why that phrase popped in her head.
Flynn’s costume had dirt all along the hem. Her shoes were caked with mud, as were her fingernails, Anna saw now. She’d wake her when Marvin got back, fix dinner and run her a hot bath. She bent down to look at the old crèche. Flynn had put one of her CDs under the kneeling figures of Mary and Joseph, the wise men behind them. Anna stared at the scene. There was a calf in the manger where the baby Jesus was supposed to be. The light hit the wise men in a peculiar way, making their faces look black, their teeth too white. Then Anna saw that the wise men
were
black and they were grinning from ear to ear. She picked one of them up. Flynn had cut out the faces of the Pips from the liner notes on the Gladys Knight CD and taped them onto the faces of the magi. Gladys Knight’s face, also grinning, shone down on the holy family, recast as the Angel of the Lord.
Anna touched Flynn’s back. She stirred and turned over but didn’t wake. Anna would let her sleep until dinner, though it was already nearing eight o’clock. She should have asked Marvin to pick up a pizza on his way back.
Anna poured herself a brandy, walked into her bedroom and flipped on the Bose radio she and Flynn had bought together last week, along with two dozen or more CDs from the ’70s. Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” played quietly now. Anna didn’t much care for Greenbaum, didn’t like his heavily synthesized sound, but it was one of Flynn’s favorites, and because Flynn slept with Anna most nights, this was the song that awoke them in the morning. Anna hit the skip button, loaded up the compilation CD, the one with Frankie Vallee’s “You’re Just Too Good to be True,” her
own favorite, the one she sang to Flynn sometimes to lull her to sleep. She turned back the bedcovers, saw something centered on her pillow. A clod of dirt and a tiny shoe, the silver shoe from the Monopoly game—where in the world did Flynn find that? Anna hadn’t played the game in twenty years or more. The last time was in Maine, where she and Hugh used to play occasionally with the radiologist and his wife who came up for weekends. Hugh had always chosen the shoe as his piece. But it wasn’t the Monopoly shoe at all, she saw now, peering closer. It was a wadded-up gum wrapper. And the clods of dirt were twigs arranged as stick figures. Anna’s scalp began to crawl. She picked up one of the little sticks, knotty, peeled, cold as a kneecap, and before she knew why or what drove her to it, she was downstairs and in the backyard, moving across the lawn with a flashlight. The same shallow holes Flynn had been digging for nearly two months. But there was something eerily unnatural out here. Feverish chills moved through her, a heat pouring in from the top, a cold pressing in from the sides. She shone the light on the bistro table. The beam caught Flynn’s optometrist’s goggles and glinted off the lenses. Underneath the table was a blue tarp, covered by branches. Anna moved everything aside and nearly fell in what was surely a hole deep enough for a coffin. She sat at the edge of it, pointed her light at the depths. There was a CD case all the way at the bottom. This was one of those moments when she needed her husband, needed him to tell her what to do, to help her figure all this out. What was wrong with this girl? What was Anna supposed to do with a child like this?