Me for You

by Lolly Winston

  The soft gong of the meditation leader’s bell brought Sasha back to the darkened room at the club, the waffled sticky mat beneath her, the dull ache in her back, the ubiquitous smell of lavender. She’d made it through the forty-five-minute guided meditation—if you didn’t count the guided part. She’d wandered straight from the imaginary beach to Stefi underwater, her two white-blond braids suspended straight up in the crystal-bright, swimming-pool-blue water, two bursts of healthy bubbles of air and then nothing. Then tears itching Sasha’s cheeks so that she’d had to wipe her nose with the back of her sleeve.

  Sasha hated to be negative or judgmental, but this type of meditation was not for her. She’d stick with the yoga next time. And tonight, during her visit with Rudy, she would tell Rudy about Stefi. Stefania, who didn’t like dolls, but loved animals. Stuffed animals, animal books, animal documentaries; The Jungle Book, The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, Stuart Little. Stefi, whose favorite birthday cake was burnt almond, and who fancied being a sports announcer, like the brilliantly tall and beautiful girl on the NBA channel. Stefi, who always told her mother to try not to worry so much, and had already learned how to make potato pancakes and French toast. Like Rudy, Stefi loved to cook!

  Sasha wanted to tell Rudy everything about her daughter, show him each of her school photos. But what if Sasha pulled Rudy underwater?

  20

  It thrilled Rudy that Sasha visited nearly every night now. Sometimes she brought dinner—takeout, or something she cooked that she wanted Rudy to try. Or she came after Rudy’s hospital dinner and they played gin rummy. They made their way through The Idiot, taking turns reading. Rudy liked reading aloud to Sasha. She was a wonderful listener—smiling, laughing, closing her eyes to imagine.

  “Your English is terrific,” he had insisted. “But is it more relaxing for you to sit back and listen? After all, you worked a long day. I just ate institutional oatmeal, and practiced my mindfulness.” Sasha agreed, and they started trading off.

  One evening, Rudy suggested that Sasha should not feel obliged to visit nearly every night, as she had been.

  Her face fell, her brow furrowed, her gray eyes widened, as though she’d just realized something: He didn’t want her here all the time.

  “I mean I love it when you do. I wish you’d visit every night. But I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

  “Question.” Sasha raised a slim, pale forefinger in the air.

  “You have the floor.”

  “Do you like eating dinner alone? I mean, not here, but at home.”

  “It is the worst part of the day.”

  Sasha nodded. Rudy had already eaten his supper of stuffed manicotti and something called tricolored chard. Sasha unpacked some cookies. Rudy set out The Idiot, backgammon, and the playing cards. “What’ll it be?” he asked. Companionship. He didn’t care if they read the dang phone book aloud to each other.

  “Tonight, something different.” Sasha pulled two photo albums out of a shopping bag and set them on the radiator. “I want to show you some pictures of my life before.” She placed her hands over her nose and mouth, her fingertips meeting at the bridge of her nose, just under her eyes. With her elbows on her knees, she sighed heavily, looked at the floor for several minutes.

  “I know for a fact, there is nothing interesting in those floor tiles.”

  Sasha’s eyes filled, and she pressed on her cheekbones as though willing herself not to cry.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  Rudy climbed off the bed and stepped around their hospital tray–makeshift coffee table. “Hey, hey.” He rubbed her back gently, just above her shoulder blades. Her hair smelled faintly of the lilacs and lemons of the first floor of the department store.

  She dipped her head lower, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of her blue-and-white striped cotton sweater. Rudy put the box of Kleenex in her lap and took his hand away, just patting her shoulder, not wanting to seem forward or presumptuous.

  “You don’t have to tell me everything. We’ve just become close friends. I mean, even if you’re a bank robber, I don’t care.” What he meant was: You’re perfect.

  And so Sasha told Rudy everything about Stefi. She wanted to start with how cute she’d been as a baby—hair almost white! But she started with that day: playdate. A distinctly American expression. In Hungary, sure, you asked neighbors and family to babysit. But you didn’t plan your kids’ calendars like they were little CEOs. Back home the kids played in the house or yard. Still, there, anything could happen. “Stefi drowning—not the mother’s fault. Not her fault.” Over and over Sasha said this, as though trying to convince herself again, these years later. “Not the mother’s fault. And Stefi, she could swim!” Sasha told Rudy. “Stefi could swim.” Sasha’s voice rose with desperation, making her case. “She’d had lessons. We went to the town pool in Hungary, indoor lessons, every Saturday morning. She would always say, ‘Mommy, watch me!’ ”

  Rudy leaped across the room to close the door, grateful for their privacy.

  “I know, I know,” Rudy said, drawing her to his chest. He knew the shock and disbelief, the anger and self-blame. He knew the relentless replaying of the day, the hours, the minutes, how you lay awake at night going back so you could enact the preceding time differently. He knew the permanent chip in your heart that never went away. You almost wanted a permanent scar on the outside of your body to show the internal pain. People would look and just think, Oh, okay. You didn’t get over it. Everything was different from that day on. You got better. You healed. You backtracked. But nothing was ever the same.

  “She could swim, she could swim, she could!”

  Rudy rocked Sasha in his arms, breathing in the clean citrus scent of her light perfume, feeling the warmth of her slim arms, kissing the top of her downy head. “Stefi could swim,” Rudy agreed. “Kids learn fast, swimming lessons at an early age are great. She could swim.”

  He continued to repeat these words to Sasha as he held her, close, but not too tightly, not invasively. Tenderly. As tenderly as he could while trying to exude that he would never let her go. Never let her suffer if he could help it.

  Together they repeated the mantra, “Stefi could swim.”

  “Thank you for sharing the pictures of her,” Rudy said, when Sasha’s hiccups finally died down. They sat beside each other on the bed now, Sasha still clinging to Rudy’s forearms. “She was a beautiful, strong, good little girl,” he reassured her. “You were a wonderful mother. You have so much to be proud of, Sasha.”

  Sasha untangled herself from Rudy a bit, bowing her head with sudden shyness, but still clasping his hands in hers. Her fingers were long and delicate and her nails trimmed and polished with a varnish like opals. They were so lovely as she showed off the watches to customers. Rudy always wanted to compliment her on this, but hadn’t yet. It was weird, but he never wanted to seem like an unctuous lech. She was a coworker, after all. And he a gentleman, he hoped. Now it felt like they were in something together.

  “Uh! I’m so stupid, so sorry.” Sasha scooted away from him a bit on the bed, still holding his hands. “Hospital is for you! You need rest, not a hysterical work friend.”

  An orderly knocked, peeked in the door, then pulled it closed again, giving Rudy a nod. The young man had a ruddy face, bright red hair, and thick forearms. The staff checked on the patients every hour. A rule that touched, rather than annoyed, Rudy.

  “Please don’t apologize,” Rudy said to Sasha, smoothing his padded fingertips over hers. “Do you know that every time we get to talk together, and I learn more about you, that I feel better?” He tapped his chest gently with one fist. “Here, in my heart.”

  She cocked her head, smiled wanly, and Rudy could see Stefi in her flawless skin, pinkish rosy cheeks, and gray eyes. In her nearly white silken blond hair.

  “You help me,” he insisted. And he wanted to do everything he could to help Sasha for as long as she would allow him.

  It seem
ed to Rudy as though his hospitalization had softened CeCe. In fact, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he was bolstering her, assuring her everything would be all right.

  Tonight she had brought Rudy’s granddaughter, along with takeout macaroni and cheese for her and a Pudding Pop she’d stashed in the freezer on the way in. Kiki sat on her grandpa’s lap when she first arrived, peppering him with questions.

  “There’s a man out there with a T-shirt on his head like Aladdin’s turban and no shirt and he’s singing and playing the guitar while this other man plays the piano and then there are ladies watching TV and other ladies making some beaded bracelets on the big table,” she reported, not missing a single detail of the after-dinner action in the dayroom.

  “I know,” Rudy said, “my little reporter. And you know what? That man is actually a young man, a student from Stanford, and he’s very smart and talented at the guitar and a good singer. I think he wrapped his shirt around his head because he’s a bundle of energy, who’s actually quite funny. And he’s studying physics and music.”

  “What’s wrong with him? Why’s he in the hospital?” Kiki furrowed her brow and sucked at her Pudding Pop.

  “Well, he stayed up too many nights in a row studying and got so tired that he couldn’t sleep very well. He needed to come in and rest and reset his clock and then get some medicine.”

  They could hear the music through the closed door of the room. But it sounded good, and only went on for half an hour before meds.

  “Oh, I gotcha.” Kiki was satisfied with this answer. That was her signature line, which she’d picked up from her father. Only, Kiki used it after listening carefully and thoughtfully to someone, processing an explanation, while Spencer was more likely to use the phrase to cut off a person from a lengthy description. Young doctors. Smarter than their patients. Especially specialists. Cardiologists? Grrrrrrr.

  Rudy brushed away these thoughts, grateful for how remarkable the staff on the ward had been. In fact, they’d diagnosed the T-shirt-bundled physics musician with bipolar disorder, explaining that it often presented among young men in college and that the demands of a full academic load could lead to spells of mania in trying to stay caught up, the lack of sleep ultimately making you crash. They weren’t supposed to discuss their diagnoses or medications at the meal table, but patients did anyway, mostly sharing what they were in for, what they were frustrated by. What they’d do when they busted out of the joint. The hyperactive student musician said he was going to smoke a carton of cigarettes and drive to LA.

  As they munched cookies after Rudy’s hospital dinner, CeCe set up Kiki with a movie to watch on her iPad in the proper visitor’s chair, which CeCe had pulled across to the other side of the long window and radiator, so she and her dad could hear their own conversation, without talking over any of The Little Mermaid. Rudy told his daughter about Sasha’s visits.

  “Oh, my lord,” CeCe said. “You are smitten.”

  “No.” But Rudy giggled as he wiped crumbs from his chin. He felt as though he’d laughed in church or a meeting.

  “You hardly know this woman.”

  “That is not true. We’ve worked together for nearly four years.” Rudy resented the words this woman, which sounded generic, illicit even.

  “A work romance.” CeCe sighed heavily, then tightened her thin lips, as though rubbing in lip balm or lipstick. But her lips were colorless and chapped. Rudy poured her a cup of water.

  “Thanks,” she said softly.

  “No,” Rudy said, “someone I met at work. There hasn’t been any romance yet, for your information. Playing a coworker’s favorite waltz is hardly a tryst in the janitor’s closet.”

  “They say . . .”

  “Honestly, Cecilia, often your rules of thumb, criteria for conduct, and lists of no-nos aren’t so much a moral code by which to live as a broken compass for not living at all.” Rudy immediately felt sorry for this loss of temper, his harsh words.

  “I don’t mean that. I’m sorry,” he added. “I value your input.” This was not totally true. Not right now at least.

  “They say go on fifty coffee dates in three months,” CeCe mumbled into her Kleenex. “I sure as hell couldn’t do it. Plus, that’s a lot of coffee. You must stay up all night worrying about the next nightmare Frappuccino mate.

  “Oh, who cares!” CeCe added, “What is wrong with me?”

  “It’s not you, sweetheart. The world is a big mess. Complete chaos. You’re just trying to make order out of the chaos.” Rudy was winging it now. It felt as though the therapy he’d been receiving had taught him to help others put life in perspective. This rickety new skill made him feel slightly less useless.

  “I don’t mean who cares. I care. I will look forward to meeting her.” CeCe rolled up her sleeves to reveal pale skin and golden freckles. “Okay, I’m nervous.”

  “I’m so excited for you to meet her.”

  “I’m not judgmental. My book group says I’m judgmental.” She took a sip from her cup of water. “Ha. Aside from hating them, I don’t think I’m judgmental at all!”

  “You know, your mother wasn’t crazy about her book club, either, honey. And she was the nicest woman. But funny. I mean would never utter a cruel word to someone’s face, and not a backstabber. But just . . . funny. You’re more like her than you realize. In the best ways.” CeCe leaned her head against Rudy’s shoulder and together they fell back against the pillows and watched Kiki, mesmerized by her movie. Rudy wished he could be that distracted from the world.

  During CeCe’s visit the next afternoon—it was after lunch, not technically visiting hours, but she had stopped by on her way to the Stanford Mall to pick up a wedding gift—she said she had thought all night about what he’d said.

  “You are my little girl,” Rudy told her, stealing the tip of her nose with his thumb pinched between his fingers.

  “Order out of chaos.” CeCe stared at the ceiling tiles above. “There was never chaos at home growing up. Everything was fine. There was always—”

  “We certainly never had to ground you.” Rudy chuckled.

  “Will we still be able to talk about her? About mom?”

  “Are you kidding me? Oh, sweetheart.” The nurse kindly popped in with Rudy’s lunch tray. “Occupational therapy in twenty minutes,” she reminded him.

  “I have to finish my decoupage,” Rudy told CeCe, tearing open a petite bag of potato chips. They shared them.

  “Do you know I think about your mother every day?” he told her. “I imagine I will for the rest of my life.”

  “Really? Even though you love Sasha?”

  “I didn’t say I loved Sasha.”

  “But you do!”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Ha. You’ll see.” CeCe’s face clouded over. “I think Spencer wants a divorce.”

  “Then we’ll check him in here. He’s out of his mind.”

  But CeCe didn’t laugh at her father’s joke. She swallowed her chip with some apparent difficulty, turned toward her father, and pulled at the Kleenex on his night tray until there were none left and the small cardboard box floated to the floor.

  She laughed and cried at the same time, which resulted in a snort, which produced more laughing and crying, mucus and tears, and finally the release of her shoulders and the tipping back of her head, a surrender that made Rudy leap to his feet and collect her in his arms.

  He wanted to pick her up and tuck her into the hospital bed, like when she was little and fell asleep watching Face the Nation, which she insisted she liked.

  Instead, Rudy continued hugging his daughter, laughing as he thought about his one Internet date, with whom he did plan on going to the opera. He’d tell Sasha. No, he’d ask her. But he wasn’t sure he’d tell CeCe.

  “Maybe you won’t split up,” Rudy suggested to CeCe, who had pressed an entire bouquet of tissue to her face. “If you do, to hell with Spencer. We have each other. You know that, right?”

  CeCe shoo
k her bowed head.

  “You’re supposed to nod!” Rudy squeezed her in his arms. He kissed the top of her head, remembering the soothing smells of baby shampoo and baby powder when she was a child. Now her coarse, red-blond hair had a grown-up clean, yet slightly musky, fragrance. Like Bethany’s deep red roses in their yard.

  “Dad, he’s having an affair.”

  “He what?” Rudy felt his fists tighten, his heart skip a beat. “Oh, angel.” He tipped back his daughter’s chin to look at her. But she collapsed against him, more forcefully than he could remember her doing in a long, long time, maybe all the way back to the time her 4-H club goat died. “That is awful and has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with you. Look at me, look at me.”

  CeCe’s face was screwed up and red as she cried. “All this time I never—”

  “Numero uno,” he said firmly, shaking his daughter slightly, bowing his head to catch her gaze. “This has nothing whatsoever to do with you.” Earlier, CeCe had skirted around a very euphemistic explanation of her and her husband having no, er, romance, and Rudy had equally skirted around a hopefully helpful reply—It’s so common. A counselor? He’d needed Bethany, god damn it!

  Now CeCe sobbed into the shoulder of Rudy’s too-big Golden State Warriors sweatshirt, the thick fabric something for her to grab on to.

  “All this time I thought, you know, he’s a neonatologist. And I was pissed off because other people’s kids would always be his priority. This sounds really, really, really bitchy, but I even said it to him: There would always be some child—some March of Dimes other couple’s child—who would be more important than his being home for dinner with our daughter. Every single night. Then we made a deal. He would always be home to read her a bedtime story. Then that got pushed out by emergencies. The helipad, the transfers.” Stanford did boast one of the best children’s hospitals in the state, and newborns with serious ailments were often transferred there.