“Seth sells drugs?” I repeated, glancing at Cora, who bit her lip.
Emily started backpedaling immediately. “Well, I just heard it, I’ve never seen him do anything.”
“Okay, I’m going to try to find him now that I have a last name, but, Emily, if you could find anyone who might have his number, I’d sure like to get it, okay?”
“Um, okay,” she said.
“And if you think of anything else, let me know, please? And if Letty calls you—”
Emily laughed a bitter laugh from a friend who’d been dumped. I felt sorry for her, and angry at my daughter. Emily had been a good friend to Letty for years, and she’d been hurt by Letty’s callous disregard. I couldn’t blame her for being bitter.
“Well, if she does, would you tell her to call me, please? And then let me know she called?”
“Okay,” Emily said, “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s just, you know, out partying or something.”
“Thanks, Emily,” I said, hanging up. I knew she said it to make me feel better, but it certainly didn’t. I turned to Cora, who was already sitting in front of her computer, and gave her Seth’s name. We turned up plenty of Seth Caples, but none who appeared to be the right age or geographic region.
Finally we checked for just his last name and Golden Gate Estates and found three Caples. We printed out directions and headed out, me driving and Cora navigating.
“So what are we going to do?” Cora asked. “Just walk up and ring the bell?”
“You have a better idea?” I asked.
“I guess not,” she answered.
“I can’t believe she’s doing this to me,” I said.
“And yet you want to do it again.”
I laughed. “You sound like Benny.”
“Benny’s a smart guy.” I shot her a look, and she amended it. “Usually. Benny is usually a smart guy. So, what have y’all been talking about?”
“I guess there’s not a whole lot to talk about. I’m still cautious, I suppose.”
“That’s certainly understandable.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said.”
“Really?” she asked. I laughed.
“Why do you sound surprised?” I asked. “Have I not been listening to your advice for more than half my life?”
“I thought you’d spent more than half your life ignoring my advice,” she said with a grin.
“No, not true. Sometimes it just takes a while to sink in that you’re usually right.”
“So what was this brilliant advice I gave that has finally sunk in?”
“In all fairness, I never said it was brilliant.”
“Okay, okay, point taken. What was this vaguely coherent advice I gave?”
“I don’t remember your exact words, but you said something about Benny being an anachronism, an idealist?”
“I remember,” she said.
“You said that as soon as he had an outlet he would calm down, and I should be patient with that. He has an innocence about him, doesn’t he? A cop, for heaven’s sake. But he’s innocent about a lot of other things. And, honestly, it’s one of the things that I love about him. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with him to begin with, that innocent determination and belief that he could make things right. And you know what? This is going to sound so crazy, and you’re the only one I would admit this to . . .” I trailed off.
“Ali, come on, you’re killing me!” she prodded me with a laugh.
“Well, when I saw him at the restaurant, I really saw him, like for the first time in years and years. And you know what?”
“What?”
“He’s really cute.”
“Oh, good Lord,” Cora said, beginning to laugh in earnest.
“He is,” I insisted, making her laugh even harder until I finally slapped her on the knee, laughing myself now.
“Okay,” she said, catching her breath. “Yeah, he is, I guess.”
“I just, I saw him the way he really is. He really turned into a handsome man, and he’s kind, and he’s funny, and he knows his job. And he’s a good man going through a hard time. I think I did the right thing by leaving, and now he’s doing the right thing, just like he always does. It’s . . . comforting. I suppose we just both needed a break. And you were right; I need to be patient with that.”
“So that’s a good thing, right? Have you told him all this?”
“I would have, but then our daughter went and ran away.” I sighed. “But it got him to really give some thought to the baby, so maybe there’s a bright side to it all.”
“Oh?”
I could practically feel Cora tense up.
“All right, let’s have it. What do you have against this?”
“I don’t have anything against you wanting another baby, Ali,” she said, but it wasn’t how it sounded. “Or, maybe, I don’t know. Why now? It would be such a long time between kids. Do you really want to have a teenager, be going through this again, when you’re in your fifties?”
“I always wanted more kids, Cora. I wanted ten kids, twelve. I wanted my own little army of kids,” I said, and now, so many years after being so grateful for Letty, the grief of it overwhelmed me again. “It’s not fair, it’s just not fair.”
“No, of course it’s not. It’s not fair.”
“And there are a lot of women having babies at my age. Hell, I’d be on top of a trend for the first time in my life.”
Cora looked out the window for a minute before she spoke, her voice soft. “Ali, what if it doesn’t work? What if the embryos are . . . bad?”
“But I can at least try. I want a full sibling for Letty. And look, I’ve gone through the heartbreak before, I can handle it if it happens again, but if it doesn’t, then I have a chance for another beautiful baby. And I want it, Cora, I really do. Why do you think I’ve kept them for so long?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Really? You never thought about them? Waiting there?”
“No,” she said, and I didn’t know what I heard in her voice, if it was shame, or regret, or something else entirely. “No, not like that. I guess I thought they just . . . faded away. I guess I didn’t give them much thought at all.”
“No, there are tons of them out there. There are even embryo adoptions now. You can donate them to other couples, donate them to science. Or destroy them. I couldn’t do that. I guess a lot of other people can’t do it either, because a lot of them are abandoned.”
“Abandoned?”
“Well, they just stop paying. And, I suppose, try to forget about them. Don’t look at me like that. I understand the temptation of it, okay? It’s not as easy as people make it. If you’ve never been the one looking at the forms, then you couldn’t possibly understand. But that’s part of it. At least I won’t be wasting all of our work. I’ll be giving them a chance.”
“What if they’re all good?”
“Viable.”
“Okay, what if they’re all viable? Are you going to implant them all?”
“Transfer them all. You hope for one to implant.”
“Whatever, Ali. You know what I’m asking. What will you do if you transfer some and it works? What about the rest of them?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe I’ll let them be adopted?”
Cora visibly paled.
“What would you have me do, Cora? Destroy them?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don’t know. Yes, I guess that’s what would have to happen.”
“Why would it have to happen?” I asked, staring at her in disbelief.
“And if it doesn’t work?” she asked. “If they’re not good, viable? Would you keep going? Get a new donor?”
I frowned. I didn’t want to think that far ahead. I believed, I really did, that at least one of those embryos was destined to be my baby. I could feel a personality out there, waiting for me to claim it, waiting to become my baby.
“
I don’t know,” I answered. “It’s so expensive . . . I just don’t know. But what is your hesitation? Are you sorry you did this to begin with?”
“No, no of course not,” she cried. “I love Letty, you know that.”
“I know, but something is definitely different on this trip, Cora. All of this, with Letty and Benny, I mean, you’re taking it all so personally . . .”
A thought occurred to me, something that now seemed obvious, why she was home, why she seemed bloated, tired, overly attentive to Letty. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid.
“Cora,” I said, nearly breathless with it. “Cora, are you pregnant?”
She just stared at me for a moment, and I felt delightfully smug, as if I had discovered her secret. But then she laughed, covering her mouth when it turned into a groan.
“What, Cora? What’s going on?”
“No, I’m not pregnant, Ali. And, you can’t use the embryos. Nobody can. I—Ali this isn’t easy. I, ah, I have a problem.” Cora cleared her throat and wiped her hands across her face, then spoke in a rush, her voice flat as if she’d rehearsed it too many times. “I have polycystic kidney disease, Ali. I’m losing my kidneys. I have to go on dialysis very soon, and if I don’t get a kidney transplant I will be on it for the rest of my life.”
I eased to a stop at a red light and turned in my seat, speechless.
She nodded. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Definitely not pregnant.”
The light changed, but I couldn’t seem to move. There wasn’t a car behind me, and Cora finally just pointed to the light. I faced forward and accelerated slowly.
“Where are we going?” I asked, aware that we were coming up on one of the streets on our directions.
“You’re going to go left at the next light.”
We were both talking as though we were in church, the music on the radio providing a strange, modern background to an atmosphere that had so suddenly grown reverential and cautious.
I eased into the left lane and took the turn.
“Right at the next street,” she said. “You okay?”
“Hang on,” I said, making the right. It was a long street, ending in a cul-de-sac, and I drove slowly, barely touching the gas pedal. “Okay,” I said, finally able to form a thought. “What do we do? What has to happen? You need a kidney? Is that the deal? How does it work?”
“Oh, Ali, no,” she said. “You don’t understand—” We both jumped when her cell phone rang. She picked it up and gave a little gasp, holding it out for me to see the Caller ID.
“It’s Letty!”
“Okay, answer it, answer it,” I said. “Don’t tell her you’re with me, she might hang up.”
She quickly flipped it open and said, “Hello?”
She listened and then turned toward me before saying, “No, no, she’s out looking for you. Letty, where are you?” She was quiet again for a moment.
“Are you okay?” she asked, and then listened and nodded at me, making me press my hand to my chest in relief. I pulled around the curve of the cul-de-sac and stopped the car, turning the radio off.
“Of course,” Cora said, making frantic scribbling motions at me. I dug in the console for a pen and a notepad, and she quickly wrote down an address, and then wrote VENICE in big letters and underlined it before turning the notepad toward me.
“No, I don’t think she’s called your dad yet,” she said. “Yes, I do, Letty, I have to tell her. I have to at least tell her you’re okay. No, there’s no argument about—”
I could hear Letty talking on the other end, panic in her voice.
“No,” Cora said, raising her voice to cut through whatever protestations Letty was making. “No, just stay there. It will take me less than two hours, just stay right there, don’t move, okay? Order something to eat, and I’ll pay for it when I get there.”
She pointed north, and I took off for the entrance to I-75, headed toward Venice and my child.
CORA
Letty had sounded about seven years old, and my chest actually hurt when I heard her. Ali took off for I-75 like a rocket, and I was reminded of the road trips we’d taken in high school, giggling and singing at the tops of our lungs up the road, waves of heat shimmering before us.
I told Ali everything Letty had said, repeating it several times before she calmed down enough that I wasn’t afraid for our lives as she sped through traffic.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll drive by and drop you off so she doesn’t see me and run.”
“Okay,” I said, unable to manage a clever retort about rescue missions and undercover ops the way I once might have. Not only was I afraid of the fact that Ali only had half of the information she needed right now, but I was also afraid for Letty. I had thought Ali had been overreacting about Letty, but now I realized that she had been exactly right to panic.
Once we got past Lehigh Acres, Ali reached over and gripped my arm.
“All right,” she said. “Now, let’s talk about this. Start over, okay? I need to know everything.”
I sighed and leaned my head against the window, the glass chilly from the air-conditioning, belying the heat just an eighth of an inch away.
“I have kidney disease,” I said, my voice dull. I could say it no other way. “Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. PKD. It is irreversible, it has progressed quickly, and tomorrow morning I have to go in and have a tube installed in my arm that they will stick needles in to remove all my blood, clean it, and put it back in, three times a week.”
“But, Cora, are you—are they sure? I mean, have you gotten a second, third, sixth opinion? When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me? Who else knows?”
I lifted my head off the glass and smiled at her. “They are sure. I’ve had plenty of opinions, and they all say the same thing. It’s a little tough to argue when even I can see the images.”
“Why? What’s on the images?” she asked, fear in her voice. I didn’t blame her. It scared me when I read about it, to picture it, but then seeing it on the ultrasound images, well, it was worse than I had prepared myself for. For about a month I had obsessively researched, and there are images and heartbreaking stories seared into my mind that I will never forget.
I’d stopped the research after that month and started concentrating on living my life until the inevitability of the hemodialysis stopped me.
“It’s, well, it’s really pretty awful, Ali.”
“Are you in pain?” she asked, taking her eyes off the road every few seconds.
“Drive, please,” I said, pointing toward the road in front of us. “Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, yes. It’s hard to be still for long. They, the kidneys, grow larger . . . because of the cysts.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. You getting a mental image?”
“I think so.”
“Well, try to block it now. I try to not visualize it anymore. It’s more important to know what it does than what it looks like.”
“And what does it do?” she asked.
“It kills your kidney function,” I said. “No kidney function means your body can’t clean all the toxins out of it, and if you can’t clean the toxins out, you die. It’s really pretty simple.”
“So the dialysis . . . wait, you said you were going tomorrow?”
I sighed.
“I know. I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you, a time. I’m sorry. It’s the reason I came, it’s why I’m here, to tell you. And look, tomorrow’s not a big deal, okay? It’s not for the dialysis, it’s just to get the access for the dialysis put in place. It’s really not a big deal.”
“How long have you known?” she asked, and there was no disguising the hurt in her voice.
“Six months,” I said, aware that it wasn’t a good answer. And, technically, I had known something was wrong for much longer than that. I just hadn’t known what. I heard her draw in a long, slow breath and assumed that a torrent of angry words was going to come riding along on the exhale. But I was wrong.
“Okay,” she said evenly, accepting it, but I was willing to bet I was going to hear more about it later. “So, you go in the morning . . . oh my God, and here I’ve just been going on and on about all of our stupid problems. How could you stand it? And now I’ve dragged you out—”
“It’s been wonderful,” I said.
She laughed. “Oh, clearly. This has been great fun for you, I’m sure.”
“Not fun, maybe, but it has been good for me, being able to spend time with you, with Letty, get to know her a little more.”
“Stop, Cora, you’re scaring me,” she said. “You sound like you think you’re going to die, like this was a good- bye trip or something. We’re going to fix this, okay? Okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“So, what has to be done? The thing tomorrow, when is that?”
“I’m supposed to be there at seven in the morning. Keith doesn’t have a flying lesson until nine, so he’s going to take me, and bring me home the next day. But I’m supposed to have someone check in on me—”
“Well, Keith isn’t taking you, I am. And I’m taking you home, and I’m staying there until you’re better.”
“It will be fine, really, it’s not a big deal. They basically connect an artery to a vein by sticking a tube in my arm,” I said, holding my arm out, tracing a loop along the inside of my elbow. “It will be the spot where they put the needles in for the dialysis.”
She looked down quickly at my arm and then met my eyes before she looked back at the road.
“What, the tube sticks out?”
“No, no, both ends are in the arm.”
“Okay,” she said, and I could tell that it made her feel better, the idea that I would not have things sticking out of me, all signs of illness contained, hidden within my body. I didn’t point out that it didn’t make me any less sick, but that would be evident enough in time, and if it made her feel better about things now, so be it.
“What then?” she asked.
I shrugged. “When my blood tests get to a certain point, I go on dialysis. Three times a week for three to five hours.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” she said, hopefully.
“It’s better than the alternative,” I agreed with her.
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