by Mira T. Lee
Perhaps he was tired, or perhaps he was wise, or perhaps it was a permutation of love I did not yet understand—he made no effort to stop her. I made no attempt to change his mind.
I wondered if he was out of my life.
• • •
She moved out, up north, to a sleepy town in Westchester. She was determined to meet the future father of her child. I tried to reason with her: Parenting is difficult. All those sleepless nights. What about your life with Yonah, in the city? What about the store? What about your work, your writing, your career?
“What about it?” she said.
“The crying,” I said. “Babies cry. Children are a lot of work. A lot of responsibility.” I recalled Third Uncle’s basement, Lucia squawking, red-faced.
She shrugged. Finally, I raised my voice. I called her rash, reckless, irresponsible.
“It’s my life,” she said. “I can love a baby.”
She began to avoid my calls.
Nothing would change her mind.
• • •
I moved in with Stefan. We rented a cozy three-bedroom house in a suburb south of Boston. We cooked. We watched movies. We planted rosebushes. We built a deck. We read books in our lawn chairs, discussed over wine, spent Sunday mornings mulling over the crossword in bed. I set up an easel in the shady part of the yard, painted while listening to the Beatles or NPR.
I lived my own life.
And for months on end I did not speak to Lucia, the longest time without contact in our lives. I would cherish this luxury of finding contentment in the mundane, revel in it like a guilty pleasure.
One day, Yonah called.
He said, “Lucia call me from hospital.”
He said that was all he understood.
The policeman said when they found her, she was calling for a young girl to come down from a tree. She spoke in soft, soothing tones, switching from language to language. Chinese, the policeman assumed, and Spanish and maybe Hebrew and Portuguese. Except there was no young girl up in the tree. Lucia had taken off her dress and her tights, placed them on the grass and spread the sleeves at right angles, like an X. “Lai, lai,” she called. “Come down. Ici.” She waved, shivering in her underwear, pointing to the target as though a parachutist might land there. “Please, miss,” said the policeman. “Pardon, Señorita. Do you speak English?”
She turned to the policeman and said, “Excuse me, sir, I speak Cyberspace.” And then she screamed and screamed.
I did not tell Yonah that story.
I did not tell him because I was afraid he would fight me again, even though Lucia had already moved north and out of his life. I steeled myself against him. I would fight and he would not win this time.
He didn’t fight.
When I visited the hospital, he was there. I don’t know how he got there, to Westchester; he seemed so out of place in middle suburbia. It was the first time he had seen her in several months. She was thin. He’d brought her favorite vegan chocolate-orange pound cake, and she ate it with delight. She had taken a pill that day, and as a reward, or an act of good faith, the bony blond doctor wrote her a pass that allowed her to go outside. If you try to run, she warned, the police will come get you. It was a warm, fall day, I remember.
We didn’t think she would bolt, we mostly trusted she would not, except for that small part of us that was afraid we didn’t know this Lucia anymore, the things of which she was capable. So we clenched our teeth as she was released to the front lawn, and she dashed out at full speed, jumping into the piles of red and brown and yellow leaves the landscapers had left in neat piles. She spun around and around with her arms outstretched. “This is so beauuuu-ti-ful,” she said, making herself dizzy. We clambered after her with long strides, breaking into a jog when she leapt too far ahead, like parents chasing after a child. We watched as she climbed a tree. Yonah hoisted her up so she could grab a low branch, and she scrabbled up the trunk with her feet. She sat on that low branch for a while, twisting her neck around like a bird, surveying from her new vantage point.
We sat on a bench. Yonah kept checking his watch. “Twenty more minutes!” he said. He did not want her to fall into disfavor with the bony blond doctor, and neither did I. “Fifteen minutes.” She acted like she hadn’t heard, humming to herself in the tree. “Ten minutes,” he said. And I nodded at him, and we stood, erect like soldiers. “Lucy, it’s time to go inside now,” we said.
“Why, Yo-Yo, what’s the time?” she said. A flippancy I disliked.
“Three-twenty,” Yonah said.
“Ten more minutes,” she said, as she swung her dangling legs. We were anxious. “Lucy, you shouldn’t be late,” Yonah said, in that paternal tone that used to infuriate me. She looked at him, leaned forward, bending to hug that low branch until her entire body lay horizontal, and then she lurched her legs and flipped over, landing two feet on the ground. “Perfect ten!” he said, and she slapped him a high five, beaming.
“Six minutes,” I said. We escorted her back up the sidewalk path, past the security guard, up the elevator.
The bony blond doctor looked stern when we arrived. “What’s this I hear,” she said to Lucia, “about you being up in a tree?” Yonah and I looked at each other, confused.
“One of the guards said he saw you up in a tree.”
Lucia’s eyes dimmed. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, and Yonah said, “She didn’t do nothing wrong. She climb a tree. We was there. We was there with her, she didn’t do nothing wrong,” and I nodded, until the doctor raised her eyebrows, squinted her beady green eyes and said, Hmmph.
“Ostrich,” he said, later.
I drove him to the train station, half an hour away, where he would take the Metro North to the 1 to the F. “Thank you,” I said.
He hugged me. He said, “Take care, Jie.”
• • •
Four days later, I was informed by a social worker that Lucia’s treatment team was planning her discharge.
I drove immediately back to Westchester from Boston. Stefan came with me this time—and though I cringed at the thought of their introduction taking place in the hospital, I also did not want to go alone.
“She’s calm,” said the social, a plump but prim woman, pink and middle-aged. She led us down a maze of hallways to her office. The Ostrich was nowhere in sight.
“Is she taking her meds?”
“She’s taken a few doses of Risperdal. On and off.”
“Risperdal?” I shook my head, confused. “But she was on Zyprexa before. Risperdal hasn’t really worked for her in the past.”
The social frowned. “We often offer it as a first-line antipsychotic. She says she’ll consider outpatient care.”
“Consider?” I balked at the word. “But does she have insight? Does she understand what’s happened? I’d like to speak with the attending psychiatrist, please.”
“The attending is indisposed today,” said the social. “Your sister is calm. We can’t keep her here. Why don’t you see for yourself.”
We were shown to the visitors’ lounge, where Lucia sat working on a jigsaw puzzle. When she saw me, a glint of light flashed in her eyes.
“Lucia, this is Stefan,” I said. “Stefan, my sister Lucia.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Stefan.
Lucia’s face darkened. She studied Stefan’s outstretched hand but did not shake it. “So. This is the Elk,” she said, with a silly smirk I did not recognize, and inside I felt my heart cave.
“I’m getting out,” she said.
“Yes, I heard.”
We attempted to make small talk. Have you eaten lunch yet? What did you do in Group today? Have you been going outside? Her answers, curt, though intelligible.
“And do you have a plan?” I asked. “For what you’re going to do next?”
“A plan? I’ll get
a job.” She folded her arms, tilted back in her chair.
“What kind of work do you do?” asked Stefan.
“Oh, I can do a lot of work. Mostly writing. Reading. Research. I ask a lot of questions, you know.”
“I heard you worked in Bolivia for a while,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, and her eyes relit as they chatted about the salt flats and flamingos and markets and choclos and the altitude in La Paz.
“Here’s a question,” she said. “A good one. Are you two going to make babies?” She pointed at us with two waggling fingers.
Now Stefan was taken aback, I could see, and my discomfort hung, tangible in the air, as Lucia scrutinized our faces and we said nothing.
“Wait. What? You’re not? Well, that seems kind of useless.”
A hardness behind her eyes I did not understand. What was it? Contempt? Arrogance?
By the time we left the building, I was on the verge of tears.
“That’s not her, Stefan.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“It’s not her. That’s not my sister. I swear to you, Lucia has never acted that way to me, not ever.”
“She wasn’t that bad,” he said.
“That’s not her. That’s her illness. And did you hear that social worker? She didn’t even give a shit. What the fuck are they thinking, giving her Risperdal?”
I slumped to the curb, face in my knees. Stefan knelt down beside me, an arm around my shoulders. “You’ve done what you can, Schätzli. Honestly, she seemed all right to me.”
“But that’s not her, Stefan. One minute she’s sweet, the next she’s snide. She’s not stable. It’s like she’s fighting some demon inside.”
He did not understand. How could he? But he gathered me in his arms, pressed my head to his chest, kissed my hair. He let me cry and cry, unfazed.
That night, back in Boston, I watched the rise and fall of his rib cage as he slept.
Are you two going to make babies?
Guilt stuck in my throat. I closed my eyes, but images of Tennessee filled my head:
Luciano, ma’am? Are you sure? The filing clerk, a perky golden-hair with breasts like balloons.
Lucy, Ma. Tell them, Lucy.
What, Nu-er?
Like, I Love Lucy. The infant, sticky with drool, in my seven-year-old arms.
Ma’am? I’m pretty sure Luciano is a boy’s name. You want me to change it?
What is it? I don’t understand.
How about L-U-C-I-A? There. That’s better, ma’am.
Ma, squinting. Lucy-ah?
Loo-SEE-uh, ma’am. Loo-SEE-uh. Oh, that’s pretty, don’t you think?
The baby began to whine and thrash.
Ma?
Okay, okay. Lucy-ah, good name. Thank you.
• • •
When I woke in the morning, Stefan was reading a book in bed.
“Sweetheart,” I said. “I need to ask you something.”
“What is it?” he said.
I drew a long breath. “Do you want to have more children?”
“Well . . .” I could see the Swiss in him strive for diplomacy. “My ex and I were so young . . .”
“Because I don’t want to have children.”
I blurted it straight out. Just like that. These were not easy words, nor easy emotions, demanding a self-evaluation I would have preferred to avoid. I clutched my blanket, cold and clammy with sweat.
“I just thought . . . I thought you should know.”
He blinked, slowly. He took my hand. If it rattled him he did not show it. “Why not?”
But I did not know what to say. That I was cold? Unnatural? Perhaps I was selfish? That any maternal instinct I possessed did not come naturally, though responsibility had been sown in me from an early age?
“Your mother,” he said, quietly. “And now, your sister.”
I nodded. “This is worse.” My voice, hoarse and strange. “At least with my mother’s illness I knew what to do. This . . . this feels impossible.”
His lower jaw protruded as he tap-tapped his teeth, a nervous habit I still found endearing.
“She seemed okay.” He kissed my forehead. “I think everything will be okay, Miranda.”
• • •
Jie, do you believe in happily ever after?
I wanted to, I did.
• • •
Two months later, Stefan asked me to move with him to Switzerland. My first instinct: to call my sister. I dialed her number, but quickly hung up. I wanted this decision to be mine, alone, and I wanted to believe.
That winter, Lucia moved into a house full of Ecuadorians; the shared cooking and communal living suited her. I wondered if Yonah ever thought she would come back to him. One time she visited the store, on her way to Chinatown for a haircut, and he called me from her phone. “Guess who is here?” he said. He cooked shakshuka and brought her tempeh and beets and yogurt-covered pretzels. It was almost like old times.
One day in February, I was back in the East Village, having lunch with an old colleague. At the end of the street, the brand-new luxury apartment building was open, shiny with glass and chrome. It housed a gym on the first floor, where young people sweated on state-of-the-art elliptical machines. I walked past the store, then past it again in the other direction. I did this three times before walking in.
“Jie!” said Yonah, his smile stretched wide. He was bouncing Chaka and Noemie’s little boy up and down on his chest. “Long time!”
“Yes, long time,” I said. I gave him a quick hug. He brought me tea and cake.
The café was nearly empty. White icicle lights blinked from the tropical-looking plants. Ella Fitzgerald played. Yonah had lost weight. He said business had been slow, ever since the twenty-thousand-square-foot gourmet market had opened a few blocks away. “How’s everything?” he said. “What’s news?”
“I’m moving to Switzerland,” I said. Stefan’s start date had been confirmed. He would be working at a hospital outside of Zurich; we would leave at the end of the summer.
“Wow, Switzerland!” he said, his eyes wide. “You will go on a big adventure!”
“I think so,” I said. I’d been once already, and Stefan’s family were lovely and kind and terribly civilized, the sort of family who congregated for dinner every Sunday at Grossmuti’s house. We’d visited Stefan’s son, too, at his boarding school in Austria, an awkward scene, with Rafi clearly preferring the company of his Nintendo Game Boy to mine—until the suggestion of tennis was made. Then Rafi perked up, and we played one set while Stefan tried valiantly to remain impartial, including me in their fist-bumps and back-thumps, their affection sweet, even as Rafi emerged the victor, six games to four. But I struggled, too, because I would be the one to leave Lucia this time, an ocean between us. Stefan consoled me, insisted without reservation: Miranda, you need to live your own life.
“Have you heard from Lucia, how is she?” said Yonah.
I did not wish to worry him, so I said she seemed fine. I told myself it could be true. Her response to my news had been uncharacteristically flat—a yeah, really? with neither approval nor disapproval, only incredulity. She lived north of the city now, and was involved with another man—just a kid, really, a Latino no more than twenty-five, with smooth brown skin and strong cheekbones. He shook my hand sheepishly, lowering his eyes, the one time that I met him, and I’d struggled, I admit, averted my gaze, tried like mad to bat away the unsettling images popping up in my mind—of him and Lucia fucking like rabbits. He did not offer me tea or cake.
“Yonah, how are you?” I asked.
“Oh fine, fine. Good, good, everything is good here,” he said. “Some director and actors, they want to make a movie in the store. Maybe the store is gonna be famous soon!” He showed me the new countertop he’d built for the
juice bar, the new shelves, new art. “I fix up the apartment, too,” he said.
The twin mattress was gone. The bed had been moved to the living room. It was covered with a thick wool bedspread with a lion on it, and on the opposite wall hung a fifty-inch flat-screen TV.
“Where is Jonny?” I asked, and Yonah told me proudly that his son had just started this semester at a cooking school in Albany.
I looked around again. The old bedroom had been converted into a proper office, with a new desk and filing cabinets and a computer that Noemie used to keep the books. “See, I am learning English,” Yonah said, showing me his pirated version of Rosetta Stone. I felt proud of him, though I eyed the ashtrays, which were still full, and he said he was trying, he really was, so I told him about a hypnotist up in Boston who was said to produce excellent results.
He opened a new closet with a mirrored sliding door. “See?” He pointed to the top shelf, where Lucia had left her collection of oddly shaped pillows, some shoes, some books, a bag of her small, girly clothes. His shirts and sweaters and heavy winter coat were organized neatly on hangers. “You want to see something?” he said. “Sure,” I said. So he pushed the shirts and sweaters and coat far to the right, and there on the left wall of the closet, he’d carefully hung two paintings: the globby brown duck above the yellow goose.
“Remember?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Cape Cod,” he said, and for one brief moment he could not conceal the pain in his smile. I asked to use the bathroom. It, too, had been remodeled, with light green mosaic tiles, though dust bunnies stuck in the corners and his camo briefs still lay on the floor. When I came out, he was sitting on the lion bedspread, his head hung low. I sat down next to him, straight and still. Our mother might’ve said this: that immigrants are the strongest, that we leave our homes behind and rebuild. Everywhere we go, we rebuild.