Authors: Kerry Reichs
“I really enjoyed lunch.” Wyatt fell into step. “Perhaps we could meet again.” He felt connected to this woman, who, like him, had to fight every step of the way.
She brightened. “Same time next week? We can annoy people at the French Market with a leisurely lunch at the best table.”
A
fter he divorced Maryn, Andy realized he didn’t like being single. He’d assumed he’d savor the freedom like the men in movies, dissuading friends from the altar with clever one-liners. But he’d hated it. He’d married Summer as soon as possible. People thought Summer had ended his marriage. It wasn’t true, but Andy didn’t correct them. The truth was worse.
Summer wasn’t beautiful, but she was bright and funny and strong. Andy was genuinely easygoing and preferred someone else to do planning. He brought looks and charm. He sought a decision maker. Drive and beauty didn’t always go together, and he preferred initiative.
Maryn had been a rare case of both. From the moment his mother had laid eyes on Maryn at the Central Valley thoroughbred auction, Caroline had pronounced her an excellent piece of flesh. His mother had grown up on a farm, and stock and breeding were paramount. Andy never questioned her advice. When it came to people, his mother was rarely wrong. A year later Caroline was on the first plane to help him buy a ring.
Andy never wondered why Maryn had married him. All he knew was that she’d been radiant that first day they met in Ojai, radiant when he’d proposed at his law school graduation, radiant when they’d said their vows on a lawn overlooking the sea. Even sweaty from a ride and smelling like horse, Maryn glowed.
It’d been a shock when Maryn calmly told him over dinner one night that she had breast cancer. He hadn’t understood at first.
“You don’t smoke.”
“It’s unrelated.” Maryn had been patient, taking his hand across the table.
“You work out all the time.” He was bewildered. “You’re completely healthy.”
“Cancer chooses randomly.”
“Canc—” He couldn’t finish the word. This wasn’t happening.
“There was an abnormal area on my mammogram. The doctor did a biopsy. I didn’t tell you because I thought it was nothing. It turns out I have stage two . . .” Maryn’s words washed over Andy as she explained things in a calm, steady voice. She was holding both his hands, as if she was trying to quell rising panic, like one of her horses. Words like “lump” and “chemotherapy” and “estrogen receptor” flowed around him, but he couldn’t take it in. He wanted to call his mother, but she had died after a too-short battle with pulmonary fibrosis. He didn’t know what to do.
“ . . . with treatment there’s every reason to be optimistic.”
Maryn didn’t look sick. Her hair was its lustrous red, her eyes clear, her breasts firm and attractive under her T-shirt. It must be a mistake.
“Andy, it’s going to be okay.” Her tone was borderline pleading.
Andy realized he hadn’t said a word since his wife had told him she’d been diagnosed with cancer. “God, Maryn, are you okay?” He turned his hands to grasp hers, offering instead of taking comfort.
She looked down. “It’s been a shock. But I’ll beat this and we’ll do everything we talked about. The cottage in Tuscany, Christmas in Nebraska, kids . . .”
“Kids.” Andy squeezed hard. They had started trying.
“I’m not pregnant.” Her gaze dropped again. “They recommend that we fertilize and freeze some eggs. Just in case.”
“Of course.” Andy was quick to agree, but he wanted to shudder at the image of a laboratory baby. In his mind it was a grotesque mutation, like science class mole rats floating in jars of formaldehyde. But it wouldn’t come to that. Maryn was vibrant and healthy and she’d be fine.
That’s the way Andy had described it to his dad. “I’m confident everything’s going to be fine. I really feel good about the treatment schedule.”
“Son, no one gives a shit how you feel. Maryn’s gonna have to put up a fight and your job is to think about her and her only. Your feelings and thoughts don’t count for beans until she’s better.”
His father’s words shocked Andy. He missed his mother. Caroline had never expected Andy to be more than he was. She understood his limitations. He needed her to tell him what to do. Without her he had spun and spun, until he’d spun completely away.
“I wish I knew what to do,” said Andy. He and Summer were discussing the lawsuit.
“We know what to do,” Summer said. “We’re going to countersue to have the eggs destroyed.”
“What?” He was aghast. “That seems harsh.”
“What else are you going to do? No sons of ours are going to have some half brother we don’t know,” Summer said.
It alarmed Andy that Summer presumed his progeny would be boys. Though he’d been a quintessential boy—Homecoming King, wide receiver at the University of Nebraska, fraternity social chair—the idea of sons intimidated Andy. He’d prefer a little girl with pink bows and a ruffled skirt who he could bounce on his knee and soothe reassuringly as he walked next to her, on a miniature pony. The little girl, maybe called Delilah, would have strawberry blond hair like Summer.
“Maybe we should talk about that,” he said. “Having kids.”
These thoughts soothed him. The lawsuit from Maryn unsettled him. He’d prefer to think about teaching Delilah to swim or ride a bike.
“Not while we’re in the middle of a campaign and fighting a lawsuit.” Summer was firm. “Not until you’re elected and I’m out of the weather center and on to an anchor desk. We have things to do first.”
“I don’t think I want to countersue.”
“You can’t give in to her, Andrew.”
“It isn’t a competition, Summer.”
“She made it one when she sued you.”
He thought about Maryn—calm, composed Maryn—driven to begging. She hadn’t begged him to stay when he told her he was leaving her, hadn’t begged him not to be his worst. But she’d begged him for this. Now she was suing him, which made him wonder if this wasn’t really, now, his worst.
“I should talk to her.”
“She’s made it pretty clear she doesn’t want to talk anymore. She doesn’t care about your wishes and she’s willing to air your dirty laundry in court during an election to do it. We need to beat her at her own game.”
“Don’t push me, Summer,” he warned. “Maryn isn’t out to get me and it isn’t a game. She’s trying to do something we agreed to during our marriage, and she filed suit before I started running for office.”
“It’s been five weeks since you got served and there’s probably some deadline for filing a countersuit. Don’t Andy this situation.”
“Don’t use my name as a verb,” he snapped. It was the first time Summer had stepped into his dealings with Maryn, and Andy didn’t like it. “This decision won’t be based on what’s easiest for you, and wearing pearls while you stab someone doesn’t make it okay.”
Her face was stricken but Andy didn’t care. Maybe he wanted to make this decision for himself. He needed to make a list. He needed to figure out what his wishes were.
What amazed Andy was how nothing happened after he filed his Answer and Counter Complaint. The earth’s rotation didn’t screech to a halt, hurling everyone from the planet. Alarms didn’t sound, God didn’t smite, the clerk didn’t even stop chewing her gum as she time-stamped the filing and gave him his copy. He felt foolish for clearing his afternoon calendar.
Andy had rationalized the filing because it bought him time to think. It got Summer off his back and it didn’t harm Maryn. Even if he won, he could change his mind. The eggs wouldn’t self-destruct when the gavel came down.
“Do you want kids?”
He and Maryn were ambling hand in hand down the beach. The wind blew her hair out like a veil and the sun painted it crimson.
“A football team?” He grinned.
“Pick another sport.” She elbowed him.
“Basketball?”
“How about tennis?”
“Only if it’s doubles.”
“You’re on.”
They hadn’t been in a hurry. They’d assumed the right time would present itself and they’d make a baby. He’d be partner, she’d be company president, they’d have an au pair with a charming accent.
“I’m going to name my firstborn son Magnus,” Andy said, watching the World’s Strongest Man Contest on television.
“No,” she said. “Kids will tape condoms to his locker at school. The therapy will be too expensive.”
“That’s Magnum,” he corrected.
“They’re high school kids. They won’t care.”
“They’re not very nice ones.”
“What can you do?” She shrugged. “Too much Red Bull and not enough Ritalin.”
“Fine. I’ll name him Conan.”
“Mm-mm.” She shook her head. “The Barbarian.”
“These bullies are delinquents.”
“High school’s a tough place.”
“How about Bruno?”
“How about Stuart?”
“Rhymes with fart.”
“No it doesn’t!”
“High school taunting is an inexact science.”
“Fine. Then Percy.”
“What?” Andy nearly fell out of his chair. “You’re not going to dress our kid like Little Lord Fauntleroy are you?”
When he realized she was teasing, it devolved from there, each suggesting names more absurd than the last. Their talk was silly, complacent. There wasn’t any serious discussion until his mom was dying.
“Maryn’s a good girl.” His mom coughed, and wiped the sputum with a delicate hankie. Andy hid a shudder.
Andy grasped her parchment hand in terror of its frailty.
“A good woman’s like a house, son. If you build a strong foundation, it’ll shelter you forever. But if you neglect it, it falls apart. You’re going to need looking after when I’m gone and Maryn’s a good one to do it.”
“Hush, Mama. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Andy, I won’t be here next Christmas, so you have to listen to me. You take care of that girl. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“And you make babies soon.”
“You’ll bounce them on your knee,” he assured her.
“I won’t and you know it, but promise me you won’t wait long. You need a family and Maryn was made to be a mother. I see it in her eyes. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Andy shook his head to scatter the memory. It wasn’t his fault they hadn’t had a baby. He hadn’t neglected Maryn. They’d been fine until she got sick. His mom would understand that things were different now. Summer was his wife. If not now, he’d have his family with her someday.
He decided the lingering ominous feeling lodged in his gut was hunger not guilt, so he called Summer to meet him for an early dinner at Piccolo.
S
orry I’m late.” I dropped into the hair chair. “Breakfast with my mom.”
Justine attacked my hair. “Did you bring the goods?”
I handed over a Ziploc full of savory
bulcinas
.
“I love her.” Justine’s hair had turned from turquoise to magenta overnight, and she had bangs.
“That makes one of us.”
“Uh-oh. What happened?”
I made an irritable gesture. “We argued about this new role . . .”
Justine squealed. “With Julian Wales?”
“No.
Cora
is the slowest casting process of all time. I’m going to evolve down to four toes before it’s over.” It had been ten days since our jaunt up the PCH, and I hadn’t heard from Julian. TMZ had photos of him coming out of a West Los Angeles martial arts studio with Daisy Carmichael, though. I hoped he’d made her try to break a cement block with her forehead. “A different one.”
The morning had not gone well.
“Why you play with your
pankūkas
?” my mother scolded over her skillet. “Is good. You eat.”
I visited for breakfast when I had late set calls. I studied her, trying to be objective. She was thin like a bird, and getting smaller each year. Her movements were nimble, despite failing eyesight, gnarled hands manipulating crepe pancakes around cheese and cinnamon with a spatula. I tried to picture myself making
pankūkas
for my child but couldn’t. I saw myself as a mother, but I didn’t see myself like my mother. I needed her support, though.
“
Mamu
, you need grandkids to gobble up these
pankūkas
.” I’d never asked if she was anxious for grandchildren, but I assumed all mothers were.
“Oh, Agnis, we wish, your father and I, for you to find a nice Latvian boy and have a family. But such is life. You can’t make it like you want. I say good-bye to my country in 1944 and never see my grandmother again. What can you do?” She shrugged and turned off the flame.
“I’m thinking about having a baby.” There. I’d said it.
I was looking at her back as she stood by the stove. She didn’t respond.
“
Mamu?
”
“I hear you.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know why you ask. You no care how I think. You do what you do.”
I sighed. “I do care.”
She turned to face me, arms crossed, mouth set. “What you think, Agnis? You think this like movie? Life is hard. You can’t just change rules and have this and have this and things always work out. You have to follow some”—she gestured at the air—“order.”
“I’m forty, now,
Mamu
. I don’t think I can wait to get married. I want to have kids before it’s too late.”
“You want, you want.” She flung her hands up. “Everything not about ‘you want.’ Life was hard for your father and me. When you was born we have nothing. We work all the time. Lots of time I’m so tired I want to cry, but you keep going because you have baby to take care and that’s life.”
“I’ll be able to take care of a baby. I have a good job.”
“I thought you thinking about this movie? I thought you had big plans for career. Academy Award guy this, and fancy movie that.”
“You said doing the movie was crazy.”
“Not so crazy as having baby! Babies not fun and games. Babies is hard work. When I was baby, it was war, the Russians occupy, I have no diapers. Your
vecamama,
she use tablecloth. In the camps for people with no country, we have nothing. One family next to ours, little girl same age as me, she get sick and she died. They no even have a coffin. They bury her in blanket.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” I was irritated.
“Life was not easy for us. Things get taken away. Things happen. I lost your father too soon. But this is the life. Why you make so hard for you?”
She blinked tears as she looked at me, and my irritation was snuffed as I saw the terror behind her eyes.
“So what’s the story?” Justine brought me back to the present.
“Hmm? Oh, it’s about a woman turning forty and having a kid on her own, through a fertility clinic.”
“Interesting.” Justine sounded bored. She’d been married since she was seventeen. “Lifetime Channel?”
“Something like that.”
“Not as interesting as
Cora
.”
“I think it would speak to a lot of women, you know, that moment when you give up on your fantasies about marriage and happily ever after and realize you have to go it alone if you want kids.” I hoped my tone wasn’t unnatural.
“Sounds sad. Who wants to have kids alone?”
“Isn’t having kids alone less sad than being with the wrong person?”
“For who?”
“Think of it this way—if something happened to Big Mike, if he died or left, you’d see a way through. You could have a life with someone else. But your kids are irreplaceable.”
“I hate it when you come straight from your mother’s.”
“If you had to choose, you’d choose the kids, right?”
“Do you know something about Big Mike that you’re not telling me?”
“No.” I slumped in my chair. What did I know about marriage anyway?
“Sit up,” Justine commanded. I sat up.
“These are the things you think about when you don’t have a Big Mike,” I tried again. “Everyone assumes they’ll get married. Even when it takes a while, you think
eventually
. . . All of a sudden, you’re forty, and no one is as surprised as you are that you’re still single.”
“The key to finding a soul mate is to grow up, quit whining, and do something about your hair. You’ll meet somebody.”
“But will it be in time?” I stared at my face in the mirror, as if viewing myself as a stranger would help me see more clearly. “At what age do you face down the moment when you realize your life isn’t going to turn out like you planned?” I had an inkling.
She stuck the pins into a twist of hair. “Most moms will tell you the fantasy is that a husband helps. Big Mike is a great guy, but I raised those kids. I doubt he could find the peanut butter if Angelina Jolie strolled up to the house and asked him to spread it on her nude body.”
“Is a single parent enough for a kid?”
“If not, there’s a million kids in trouble. Sometimes I envy my neighbor, Naomi. She’s a single mom and doesn’t seem to resent it at all. Like you don’t miss what you never had. I spent a lot of motherhood being pissed off at Big Mike for not helping more. She’s tired, sure, but I was tired
and
resentful. She gets to call all the shots too, and no one argues with her.”
“Your mom helps out, doesn’t she?” I was still rattled by my mom’s reaction.
“My folks love my kids for three hours at a time, when they’re shiny and charming. They aren’t there at four in the morning when Luther has thrown up all over his sheets and I haven’t done laundry in two weeks. I put down newspapers. Don’t call social services.”
“They’d be astonished that someone still reads newspapers.”
Justine paused in her work. “The thing about having kids is, we’re all gonna mess up. Our parents messed us up, we’ll mess up our kids, nobody’s going to do it perfect. You focus on getting the big stuff right, and try to enjoy the little bastards when you can.”
She was right. I couldn’t let my mom get to me. I was letting too many people get under my skin lately. As if on cue, a text message popped up on my phone.
Seven days without a pun makes one weak. Call me.
It was from Julian. My stomach flipped. I typed back.
A good pun is its own reword.
Justine’s grin split her face. “Enough about kids. Let’s talk about Julian Wales.”
“No.” I put my phone away. “Are we done?”
“You look as fresh as a page from the buy one get one free clearance section of a Russian brides’ catalog.” Roxy was scheduled to have a rough day. “You’re not going to call him?” She’d readsdropped my text, and was not to be diverted.
“There’s no privacy on set for a personal call.”
“You mean a work call.” She grinned.
“Of course.” I had no idea anymore.
“You’re still toting
Cora
everywhere.”
The script peeking from my bag was more battered than an onion ring. Next to it were equally dog-eared cryobank donor profiles.
I had the eerie sensation of time passing but not moving at all. I was exactly where I’d been two months ago. What the hell did I want?