Authors: Kerry Reichs
“Be a shark. Join me for a casual lunch Tuesday with my old friend Kathryn Bigelow. I should mention that she’s preoccupied with casting her movie
The Hammock
, sort of a
Steel Magnolias
thing, so that topic might dominate the conversation, but hopefully it wouldn’t be too boring.”
Pause. “Interesting.”
“I fired Daisy.”
Another pause. “You did?”
“I’d like to think I learn from my mistakes. Plus, she’s a brat.”
“She
is
a brat.” Dimple warmed. “She’s not nice to her own dog.”
“You have no idea.” Eva looked down at the featherweight knot. He looked back with limpid eyes.
“What kind of twenty-five-year-old carries a $10,000 bag? She should still have college loans!”
“In her original rider for
Rainy Season
, she demanded that every morning her path and the set be scented in advance with Daisy fragrance from Marc Jacobs, and six bouquets of fresh daisies be placed in her trailer every day. My line-item veto downgraded her to one bunch of fresh flowers on arrival.”
“Julian deserves her,” Dimple sniffed. “So where’s this lunch?”
“The Belvedere at the Peninsula Hotel, Tuesday at noon. You’ll like Kathryn. Maybe we can all nip into the spa for a massage after.”
“All right,” Dimple said. “I’ll join you. But no more apologizing. The
Cora
adventure is done and we don’t need to speak of it again.” She paused. “And that massage might need to be prenatal after all.”
“I can’t wait to hear about it.”
“Just so long as you keep it to yourself this time,” Dimple rejoined.
After she hung up, Eva felt better, if not absolved. She’d come clean, and that got her closer to the person she wanted to be if she couldn’t be the person who hadn’t done it at all. And she had a date with Dimple to look forward to.
She stroked the Lilliputian creature in her lap. “Looks like it’s you and me, Charlie.” His tiny tongue flopped out of his mouth as he looked at her expectantly. Eva considered. “How do you feel about the name Chuck?”
Eva swore the dog smiled. She smiled back, reaching for the phone again. “Guess we’ll find out if Sawyer meant what he said about getting a dog.”
T
he night lit up, an instant of bright clarity, then it went dark. I froze on the couch, shriveling into as small a form as I could manage. I was torn over the television. I thought it best to turn off all appliances in a storm, but I was watching the Directors Guild of America Awards show. It was like pouring pickle juice in my eye, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to catch a glimpse of Julian. And I wanted to see if the seat next to him was empty.
The camera panned the crowd and my heart thudded. Was that Daisy Carmichael’s hair? I thought of the way I’d felt with Julian, savoring his limelight, and it made me sick to think of Daisy in that role. The camera panned away, and I berated myself. I should turn this shit off.
The storm answered for me. Everything lit up then pitched to black.
There was a distant boom, then it was as silent as the grave. The power was out. My blood started thrumming. Lightning must have hit the transformer. That meant it was close. Intellectually, I knew that the bolt that killed the power wasn’t now going to stroll to my house and kill me, but my pulse spiked nonetheless. I slid from the sofa to the floor and scooted to the center of the room, touching nothing. I thought I’d try some yoga, but, as always, I couldn’t think of a single pose without an instructor telling me what to do. I needed a glass of wine, but that was off limits. I focused on deep breaths.
I tried not to get weepy. It happened anyway. Why was I alone? Why wasn’t there someone for me, someone who would fix the lights, stop the lightning, or at a minimum, hold my hand?
“Dimple, you’d better be pregnant, because if this isn’t hormones, you’re pathetic.” I berated myself aloud. Julian was dead wrong. I could handle myself, and be a mother too.
A flash made me cringe. Take care of myself or not, being alone was exhausting at times. During lightning storms in particular.
Thunder rolled, and I braced myself, counting. I got to seven before the strike. Seven miles away, if you believed the old wives’ tale. I tried to picture what was seven miles away. All that came to mind was a smoking crater.
A knock at the door. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I sat panting and the knock came again, more forcefully. I scrambled to my feet, feeling foolish for huddling on the floor, even though no one could have seen me. I hesitated a second before grasping the brass knob, praying lightning wouldn’t strike while I was touching metal. I threw open the door, letting go quickly.
Julian filled the space, bald head slick, rain soaking his tuxedo.
“It was lightning,” he said simply, and shouldered his way into the room.
I remained rooted. “Aren’t you supposed to be at . . . ?”
“A dumb awards show? When I could be here, helping you breathe into a paper bag?” He wiped a rivulet from his forehead. “Can I have a towel?”
“You can’t just—”
Lightning struck again and my bravado ended on a squeak. Julian took two steps and pulled me tight into his arms. I let him, standing in the dark surrounded by steel bands, damp slowly soaking through my blouse. I breathed in his smell. Moments passed.
The lights flickered and came back on. The TV emitted a burst of applause. The private embrace became awkward. I stepped away, shivering in my clammy T-shirt, and held my elbows. I had no idea what to say. I turned off the TV, and we looked at each other.
“It didn’t pass,” he said.
“What?”
“It didn’t pass. Missing you.”
“Julian . . .”
“Dimple, I screwed up. You threw me a strike ball and instead of taking a deep breath and swinging, I panicked. And said some pretty shitty things.”
“They’ll be hard to unhear.”
“Remember when we talked about that moment when the uncensored self is visible? When I look at that in myself, what I see is a selfish guy who killed his dogs. I don’t mean only that, I like myself plenty. I’m as decent as anyone else. I have a good moral code. But deep down, there’s this crack at the core, with that shadow.
“You’re being very hard on yourself.”
“I have to be hard. I have to work harder and care more to make up for it. But there’s so much to care about, the poisoning of our foods with additives, the continued existence of laugh tracks, ignorance, poverty—I’m defeated before I start.”
It was eerie to hear him express the sentiments I’d shared with Eva.
“I pour everything into my movies, so that I can make other people care, and redeem myself by creating this great caring army. Collectively we can care enough.”
I wanted very badly to touch him, but didn’t move.
“With you, I’m naked. I feel more like the guy who killed his dogs than the guy who deserves you. ”
“I’m not special,” I said. “I’m not particularly bad or good. Stars, they’re just like us.”
“You’re wrong. You have an energy that makes people want to be with you. That makes people want to watch your every move on TV. That makes me think about you all day.” He stepped close. “I don’t want to think about you all day. I want to be with you all day.”
“I want that too,” I whispered. “But . . .”
“I should be more clear. I will do what it takes to be with you. What you want, I want, because what I want is to make this work.” He hesitated. “If you do.” The vulnerability was stark.
“I do.” I was fervent. “I just don’t know if it’s that simple. If love is enough.”
“In the movies, heroically emerging in the night to ‘save’ you would be a satisfyingly cinematic ending, with an orchestral crescendo telling the audience how to feel. But this is real life, and we have real issues, so it’s going to take more than that. It’s going to take forty-eight to seventy-two hours of lockdown hashing through this. We’re going to talk it out until we can talk no more, and I’m not leaving until we’re done. But, first . . .”
He bent his head and covered my mouth in a kiss that was passionate and hungry. My return kiss was starving. I clung to the cords of his neck, pressing against him as if my mind could stop buzzing if my body joined Julian’s. I poured all my longing into the kiss. It went on for a long time.
When at last he pulled away, he said, “Shall we do this thing?” The hopeful look on his face made my heart ache, but I was still conflicted.
“Of course I want to try, Julian, but what if we make a worse hash of it? It could hurt more than it already does. Maybe we should cut our losses.”
“I think I’ve changed, Dimple. I’m begging you for a chance. If I can’t convince you this weekend that I’m less of a bullheaded dunce, a kiss on the forehead and I’ll be gone.” He cupped my face with his hands, eyes intense. “Please. Two days.”
I stared at his beautiful face. Of course I was going to say yes, if for nothing more than two days together.
I nodded.
He kissed me hard, then clapped his hands. “We’ll need sustenance. Do you want pizza or Chinese?”
And that’s how it went. We fought for two hours, refused to speak for two hours, talked for two hours, sat in silence for two hours, fought some more, talked some more, all weekend long. After Mao’s Chinese, the fights got shorter. After Abbot’s Pizza, the silences were more comfortable. After Fromin’s breakfast, the talk gained future tense. After Le Petit Greek, we kissed. After we slept the second time, I woke up first.
From my vantage cradled against him, I watched the light play on the planes of his face. His eyes opened, immediately alert and bright, coming right to mine. We looked at each other.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too,” I said.
He twisted my hair in his hand and inhaled its scent.
“Now that you’re not going to kick me out, maybe you can help me. I’ve been thinking about this PSA inspired by a passionate woman. It will terrorize voters with the chilling effect of Prop 11 on women just like you. I need a worthy actress.”
“You’re an activist now?”
“I can’t exist exclusively on the big screen.”
“I though small acts were a waste of time.”
“Puny is in the eye of the beholder. My PSA will be epic. Better than
Lawrence of Arabia
. More camels too.”
“Why now?”
He looked in my eyes. “Someone special explained the importance of the selfless life.”
“And you want kids too?” I was hesitant. It was a lot of transformation.
“Only with you.”
“What if I’m pregnant?”
“I hope she has your eyes.”
“You don’t care if you’re not the father?”
“Not in the least.”
“You’d try again, if I’m not pregnant?”
“I would.”
The simplicity of his answers hit me the most. I started to cry.
He pulled me tight. “Dimple, please trust me. I want to buy our family pre-baked oatmeal cookies for the rest of my life. It turns out it was there all along. I only needed to figure it out.”
“I like lots of raisins in them.” I was sobbing now, with relief, joy, probably hormones.
“You’ll be my raisin d’être,” he said before possessing my mouth and body.
“You have a serious case of the
BABIES,
” Dr. Singh said. “I’d say about six weeks.” Her words nearly made me pee my full bladder. I was pregnant.
Pregnant
. I let the word roll around my mouth like a butterscotch candy. She turned the ultrasound monitor so Julian and I could see.
“Wow. There he is!” I pointed to the dark sac. I was astonished by how big and clear it was, the size of a quarter already.
“There
she
is,” Julian corrected. “What’s that?” He pointed to another dark spot on the screen.
“There
they
are,” Dr. Singh corrected.
My mouth dropped open.
“Twins?” I croaked.
“Growing like a weed in your uterus.”
“Twins,” Julian repeated. We looked at each other. I had no idea how to react.
Pregnant
.
Twins
.
“You’re going to have to stop buying me bunny books,” I said, at last. “We need the room.”
“Can we name one of them Keaton?” Julian asked.
“Anything but Agnis,” I said for now, knowing that never, ever would my children be named after a director. Directors were
such
a pain in the ass.
M
aryn was slipping away.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Dr. Singh said to Wyatt.
“It’s over two months early,” he protested. They couldn’t come this far and lose that baby.
“Wyatt, I fear the alternative would be delivering the baby when Maryn can no longer support it.”
“You mean when she’s dead.”
Dr. Singh nodded. “Her body is depleted. The detriment to Maryn from prolonging gestation is exponentially greater than any benefit to the child. Steroids have advanced her lung development enough that survival is likely. The baby is healthy now, but malnutrition is imminent. Maryn’s body needs to conserve energy, and its ability to use food and fluids properly is decreasing.”
Wyatt had never been so lost. How could he trade Maryn for the baby? The cost of this child was high.
Dr. Singh continued. “Weighing the alternatives, I believe it’s best to deliver the child to the care of the NICU, and support Maryn with palliative treatment to prolong her time with the child in some comfort.”
Maryn would want time with her daughter. “I’ll talk to her.”
Dr Singh nodded. “I’d like to do the C-section in the morning.”
Wyatt slipped into Maryn’s room. She was sleeping, as she often was now. He sat next to her bed.
When Maryn stirred, Wyatt allowed her time. Her changed metabolism often left her confused. She blinked a few times, and smiled when she saw him.
“How’re you doing?” He spoke quietly, which was a challenge because he wanted to shout over the howling banshees inside him.
She worked her mouth.
“Ice chips?” At her nod, he filled a cup from the pitcher. She pressed a button, and the bed angled her into a sitting position.
“Thanks,” she croaked past the ice chips.
It was grotesque, the fecund health of her swollen abdomen against the wasted pallor of her frame. Her face too was swollen from the steroids. It was hard not to think of the baby as a parasite destroying its host. Wyatt had to remember the cancer was the enemy. The baby was the prize.
“Feel up for a talk?”
Maryn looked wary. “I’m only thirty weeks. I won’t do anything until thirty-two weeks.” She kept pushing the dates.
Wyatt looked at his hands. He thought about Dr. Singh’s words.
“In chemistry, for certain potions to work, the ingredients have to be perfectly measured. A pipette too much or too little, and nothing will happen. If you get it just right, you create a miraculous reaction.”
Maryn listened.
“Your energy is declining. Your body is—” He paused. “Shutting down. The baby is increasing in strength. You have intersected at the point where the elements are perfectly measured. If you deliver tomorrow, you will both come out of it with enough health and time for the miracle of overlap. If you don’t, that reaction may not occur.”
Maryn twisted the blanket. “What about her lungs?” she whispered.
“Dr. Singh believes the steroids have matured them sufficiently. With treatment in the NICU she should be fine. It won’t be pretty at first, with feeding and breathing tubes, but it’s reasonable to believe that if you take care of yourself, there would be . . . some time.”
“And me?” She didn’t look at him.
“Palliative care.”
“And you?”
Wyatt’s eyes flew to hers. “Me?”
“I don’t want to leave you with a sick child.”
“Oh for god’s sake, Maryn! If you have to think like that, then don’t leave me at all, but don’t be ridiculous. The baby isn’t a burden, it’s a joy.” Wyatt ignored his inner demon whispering,
At what cost?
“You won’t resent her, will you?” She spoke his darkest fear.
As he looked at her, the wailing inside quieted and he knew his answer. “It’s hard not to feel conflicted, because I’m here with you and I don’t want you to die. But when the baby is here, she’ll be you. If anything, I’m going to love her too fiercely.”
“I guess we’re having a baby in the morning.” Maryn rested her hand on her belly, looking lost, as if unsure of her existence once it was gone.
Wyatt covered her hand with his. “It’ll be more real when she’s here,” he reassured her. A thought occurred to him. “You need to pick out a name.”
“No,” Maryn corrected. “You need to pick out a name.”
“I’ll name her after you,” said Wyatt.
“No!” Maryn refused. “Don’t make this girl a walking sarcophagus.”
“Okay then.” There was a name. It was the name that slipped to Wyatt’s lips whenever he thought of the baby. “Joy. Joy Nydia.”
“Joy,” Maryn repeated, savoring it. “It’s perfect. What does Nydia mean?”
“Nydia was a blind flower seller who saved her beloved at the cost of her own life.”
Maryn frowned. “Wyatt . . .”
“That one’s for me,” he said. “She’s saving me.”
Maryn considered. “All right then.” She stroked her bump. “See you tomorrow, Joy Nydia.”
Wyatt helped Maryn get ready in the morning. He tucked her hair into a cap. He washed her face. He put her watch and rings in a bag. Here’s what he wanted to put in the bag: his grief, and hers. His guilt. Her pain. The cold she couldn’t shake. The baby’s loss. The fear. The futility. The cancer. He couldn’t do that, but he could walk beside the gurney all the way to the door. He could say, “I’ll be waiting when you wake up.” He could sit.
It was jarring when the doctor emerged fifteen minutes later to report that the procedure had gone fine. It seemed an insignificant amount of time for the culminating event of three people’s existence.
“Maryn was under general anesthetic because of her weakened condition, so she’ll be in recovery for several hours. The baby is healthy, if diminutive, at 3.7 pounds and 14 inches long.”
“Can I see her?”
“I can take you now.”
Wyatt had never seen anything so small and marvelous in his life. Watching her in the enclosed incubator, tubes invading her tiny nose, he suffered ecstasy and pain simultaneously. It left him heaving for air like an imbecile.
Dr. Singh patted him on the back.
“That monitor measures her heart and her oxygen levels. The tube down her nose is for food, the one down her throat is for oxygen. I expect that one will come out soon. The ankle band is the baby lojack to make sure she doesn’t sneak off to have a smoke. She’s responding well. Congratulations, Wyatt.”
“And Maryn?” He tore his eyes from Joy to look at Dr. Singh.
A shadow crossed her face. “Dr. Gavin thinks she might have a month, maybe two.”
Wyatt took a leave of absence from school and visited his two ladies every day. He scrubbed his hands raw for them. Eva came and brought little pink dresses for one and hand cream for the other. For Wyatt, she brought boneless chicken sandwiches.
Wyatt would go see Joy in the NICU day and night, regardless of visiting time, spending hours there during Maryn’s long naps, gazing hungrily at his daughter, reading to her, letting her grasp his Goliath finger in her tiny hand. He found himself using the word “daughter” unnecessarily. Buying coffee, a call to Eva, greeting the charge nurse, were all opportunities to say it.
Daughter
.
He would bring back reports to Maryn.
On day two, “The hair on Joy! She’s got a head of red curls like Annie.”
On day three, “They took out the breathing tube, and she had something to say about that. She’s got lungs!”
On day four, “She’s chillin’ like a Hilton under the sunlamp.” They were treating her jaundice with phototherapy. “She’s got a bright purple eye cover.”
On day five, “She has a little stork bite birthmark on her elbow.”
On day six, “You hang in there,” he said. “She’s doing great. She’ll be able to come to you soon.”
After a week, Maryn insisted on visiting Joy. Wyatt rolled her to the NICU in a wheelchair. No one cautioned about the risk of infection in traveling through the halls. What would be the point? Her comfort was their only concern now.
When she saw her daughter for the first time, Maryn went still. She stared. Wyatt waited.
“She’s a marvel,” Maryn whispered at last. “Look at that ear.” Her finger traced whorls on the plastic bassinet.
“She likes to sleep with her fist by her cheek, like a miniature Rodin.” Wyatt found it enchanting.
“She’s flawless.” Tears streamed down Maryn’s face. Wyatt left her alone.
After fifteen days, Wyatt gave Joy a bath in a teeny plastic tub, and changed the tiniest diaper ever before wrapping her in blankets. He swaddled carefully because she couldn’t control her own temperature. He didn’t fear her fragility. If anything, he was in awe of the little mongoose. Her will was tenacious.
After twenty-one days, the feeding tube came out. They let Joy spend a few hours every day in Maryn’s room. They positioned the bassinet next to her bed, and Maryn spent the time with her hand encircling a tiny wrist, withdrawing only when she feared spasms might cause her to harm the child.
The spasms came more often.
“Please take some morphine,” Wyatt begged. He couldn’t bear the grey waves that compressed Maryn’s face. She’d refused palliative pain management.
“I only have a little time with her. I don’t want to be blurry.” She grimaced. “It’s not that bad,” she lied.
Wyatt turned to fuss with something on the windowsill. He didn’t know what his hands touched, but it didn’t matter. He had to hide his burning eyes from Maryn. As one became more robust, the other faded. As consumed as he was with his daughter, Wyatt’s focus was Maryn first, his absorption with Joy a vehicle to bring her to Maryn.
One day, she woke when Wyatt returned from visiting Joy.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he smiled back.
She rested her hand on her abdomen, eyes widening. Wyatt feared she was in pain, but she laughed. “I felt the baby kick!” She looked at him excitedly.
All the blood left his body. He called Dr. Gavin, in a panic.
“You may need to prepare yourself, Wyatt,” was all the man could offer.
The next day, Maryn slept all day. The nurses had to change the bed linens twice. Wyatt didn’t leave that night, curling up in the corner chair.
When she woke in the morning, she demanded, “Where’s Joy? Did she eat well?” It was a perfectly normal day.
Maryn herself didn’t eat or drink. The hand that reached for her daughter’s tiny fingers was bluish, her skin cool to the touch.
When rattling settled into the breathing that alternated between rapid and slow, Maryn talked.
“She’s beautiful.”
“She looks like you,” Wyatt agreed.
“There’s money . . .”
“Stop,” Wyatt commanded.
“ . . . for the funeral,” Maryn persisted. “I wrote a check so it isn’t . . . held in probate. And for Joy. Everything goes to you . . . both.”
“You’ve given us the richest gift imaginable.” Wyatt’s eyes filled. “I wish I’d met you earlier.”
“Everything . . . I’ve given you is Dumbo’s feather. You don’t . . . need it . . . to fly.”
Wyatt’s throat closed completely. Maryn grasped his hand.
“Cancer patients talk about a phantom future . . . like amputees have a phantom limb. You see future jobs and trips and loves that . . . will never happen. I was lucky . . . in a way . . . to have it twice. Cancer freed me . . . to do the things I should’ve been doing all along. I did . . . what I needed to do . . . I don’t see a phantom future . . . I see Joy . . . with you.”
Wyatt could think of a hundred movies with gripping scenes where a beloved character was clinging to life in a precarious situation, and others encouraged them to “hang on” and “don’t let go.”
This wasn’t that scene.
“You can trust me,” was his way of saying it was okay to go.
Maryn couldn’t speak or move after that day, but she was there. Wyatt sat by her bedside, quietly talking. He spoke about Joy’s progress. He spoke about plans he had. He told her about the ridiculously premature pink wagon he couldn’t resist. At the end, he and Joy were both there. He tucked the little bundle into the crook of Maryn’s arm, and sat holding her hand.
As her rattling breath stilled, he kissed her forehead and whispered, “Check in on us, sometimes.” And she was gone.
Wyatt asked a nurse to take Joy, and left the hospital. He was surprised to find it was dark outside. He walked away from the lights of the building and looked up at the stars. There were so, so many against the inky sky. It was incomprehensible that there were that many people in the world too. India had a billion. Los Angeles had four million. All those lives teeming on the planet. How could the absence of one make it seem so empty?
He sank to his knees and let the sobs come, a loosely jointed penitent wracked with grief. Every element of his body was a conduit for the pain—his back arched, tears ran from his eyes, moans raked his throat, sobs burned his lungs. He gave up to the grief and rage and unfairness until he was spent. He folded into himself and cool emptiness replaced raw bereavement. He hunched there a long time, breathing in and out.