Have You Found Her

by Janice Erlbaum

  I reached out, and she bent down to hug me. “I can’t wait to read it,” I said.

  Jodi and Sam hugged, and Evan shook Sam’s hand good-bye. Another poignant farewell, marred only by the leering toothless guy trying to get hugs from us, too.

  “Good-bye!” he called, arms open as he followed us, now fleeing down the front stoop. “Good-bye!”

  Two weeks passed in silence—no letters, though I sent a few, enclosing another CD from Bill. I worked peacefully and productively all day long, no phone calls from Sam to field; I beamed at the FRIENDS frame on my bookshelf. I went to the shelter on Wednesdays—things were in chaos there. With budget cuts, staff reductions, and space consolidation, the girls were stacked up like cordwood, piling one on top of the other on their way into the lounge, desperate for attention. “Miss, I’m hungry! I’m pregnant! I need my medication! They won’t let me ride the elevator! This bitch stole something out my room! You is who I’m calling a bitch, bitch!”

  “Ladies, ladies.” You can only say that so many times. It’s not abracadabra, it’s not going to do anything magic if you keep repeating it. “Ladies, I know it sucks right now, but try not to get thrown out of here, because it’s a lot better than the alternatives.” They should have seen where Sam was living. She couldn’t even go outside.

  The simple gold band I’d bought for Bill shone like a beacon when I dared to wrest it from its hiding place and peek inside its box, where it was nestled next to a matching ring for me. He’d been hinting around about things he wanted for his birthday, various clothing items and obscure Japanese movies on DVD, and I pretended to take note, thinking, Too bad, you’ll have to get it yourself. But as the day grew closer, my palms grew clammier. He was going to like his birthday present, right? He wasn’t going to say no, was he?

  I was at my computer one night after dinner, poking around online, when the phone rang. Sam.

  “Hey there!” My voice rose in undisguised pleasure at the sound of hers. “I was just thinking about you! Are you off orientation now?”

  “Not quite, but almost.” She sounded a little guarded, less animated than usual—maybe she was sick again. “I been doing real good, though. I haven’t had any setbacks or anything, so it should be soon.”

  “Oh! So this is just a bonus call, then.” I rose from my seat and started pacing. She was still at the halfway house, I hoped; she wasn’t calling from Grand Central station or anything.

  “Kind of. They gave me special permission to call you, ’cause…” She paused for a second, and her voice grew even more hesitant. “Now I don’t know how to say it over the phone.”

  “What? Say what?”

  “Uh, well…” She sounded like she was about to change the subject. “Do you think you’d rather get important news in writing, or by phone?”

  I’d rather you stop stalling, I thought, and tell me what you called to tell me. “By phone. Why, what’s up?”

  She took a deep breath. “I…I tested positive for HIV.”

  Wham. The news hit me like a crowbar. “Okay,” I said, steadying my voice. “That sucks, but we can deal with it.”

  She didn’t say anything. I just heard her breathing, so I continued, as calmly as I could.

  “I know a few people living with HIV, and they have to take a lot of meds, but they’re doing all right. Some of them have been totally fine for years, even decades. So you’re going to be all right, okay?”

  Bill came into the room, face grave. He looked at me—Tell me I didn’t just overhear… I nodded, tears in my eyes. He sat down heavily in the nearest chair, shaking his head.

  “Yeah,” said Sam, resigned. “It sucks, though. It’s like, I didn’t have enough to deal with.”

  I tried to stay firm. “Look, it sucks, but it’s good that they caught it. Now they can treat it.” Again, no reply. “How’d they find out? You got tested, I guess.”

  She sighed. “The pulmonologist, he’s the one who said it. He said, ‘You keep getting real sick, you know, and maybe you should take another HIV test.’ ’Cause I tested negative back in November, when I first came into the shelter; I knew that was one of the first things I had to do when I came in, ’cause of everything I’d been doing. I mean, this isn’t really a surprise, considering my background.” She approximated a chuckle, huh. “I was more surprised when the November test came back negative. I was like, ‘Are you sure?’”

  I kneeled down, put my forehead to the floor like I was praying toward Mecca, and picked it up again, reeling. I had to get it together and not make this worse, had to tell myself that AIDS was not a death sentence anymore. I couldn’t think of the people I’d known who’d died. I had to remember the ones who were living.

  “Well, if you tested negative as recently as November, then they caught it right at the outset, which is great.” Unless that was a false negative. I’d heard about those, but I wasn’t going to mention that possibility to Sam. “Did they tell you your T cell count and viral load?”

  “I’ll find out soon.” Another heavy sigh. “I’m still…dealing with it. They just told me yesterday.”

  “Oh, babe. I’m so sorry. This isn’t what you need right now. I know it complicates things for you. But I’m not kidding, I promise you, you’re going to get the best possible care, and we’re all going to get through this with you, okay? This doesn’t change anything. You’re going to live a good long time.”

  Bill was shading his eyes with his hand, his mouth drawn down in an exaggerated frown. I was still on my knees. Sam sounded like she was spacing out again, staring at a wall or something, her voice distant and flat. “That’s…I hope so.”

  “You will.” I struggled to my feet, struggled to keep my voice upbeat. “I promise. And I wouldn’t promise unless I was sure.”

  She sighed again. “I know. I…wait a minute.” She put her hand over the phone, had a brief discussion with someone, and when she came back her voice had quickened. “Hey, they say I have to go now. But I’ll write to you as soon as I hear more from the doctors.”

  I balled my fist in frustration—they couldn’t give her another two minutes to talk to me right now? This phone call was impeding her recovery from drugs? “T cell and viral load,” I stressed. “Let me know, okay? And listen, hang in there. This isn’t going to change anything. You have to stay strong, and stick with the program, and you’re going to go to college and become a vet, and do all those things you want to do, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Janice.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  I hung up the phone and sank back to my knees, then crumpled all the way down until I was lying on my back on the floor, staring at the ceiling. “Uuuggghhh,” I groaned.

  “Oh, babe.” Bill shook his head. He looked as devastated as I felt. “I’m so sorry.”

  I groaned again, trying to expunge the sick feeling from my gut, trying to talk sense to myself the way I did with Sam. Okay, it’s bad news, I instructed myself, but not fatal. I couldn’t start thinking of her as sick, couldn’t picture her dying, but hadn’t I been doing that since the day we met, practically? All those days in St. Victor’s, the times she went missing, the phone call at 2 A.M.—in truth, I’d grown used to picturing her dead. She’d been on the verge of death for as long as I’d known her. It was a miracle she’d made it this far.

  Bill attempted a smile for me. “You sounded great, though; you sounded totally positive. You didn’t sound fazed at all. I’m sure that’s just what she needed to hear.”

  “Thanks.” Trust Bill to find the bright side in all of this—Well, at least you were awesome. And ridiculous as it was, it actually perked me up a little, made me snap to attention. I rolled onto one side. “And you know, I wasn’t lying; she can live a long time, if she takes care of herself. This doesn’t have to inhibit her at all.” Except for the nine thousand pills she’d have to take, and all their side effects. And how was she going to afford them? I’d have to go online and start researching treatment. Hopefully the
halfway house was looking at the various aid options. Jodi would probably know; Maria might, too. “I mean, it does suck, but it’s not a huge surprise, really. This is probably the best we could have hoped for, that they’d catch it and treat it fast.”

  “I guess this explains why she’s gotten so sick so often.”

  “Right.” I thought back to the hand infection, how fast it had become sepsis, how the doctor at the shelter thought Sam might have sabotaged it so she could stay at the shelter, the first safe place she’d ever known. Wrong diagnosis, Doc. Try, “the first stirrings of an autoimmune disorder.”

  “So what happens from here? We wait to find out the numbers?”

  I rolled back flat on the floor. “That’s all we can do,” I said to the ceiling. Wait. There was nothing else to be done. I couldn’t help Sam in any way—I couldn’t handle her health care, or her social services; I couldn’t even hold her hand over the phone while she dealt with this. I couldn’t do anything, fix anything, call anybody, pay for anything. The only thing I could control about the situation was my own reaction.

  Unsurprisingly, I had a hard time falling asleep that night. I lay in bed cursing god, or disappearing photons, or whatever force had conspired to do this to Samantha, whoever or whatever had decided to make her life a cruel joke, starting twenty years ago, on April Fool’s Day, 1985. After one of the worst childhoods imaginable, against tremendous odds, she’d been busting her ass to try to live a decent life—checking into a lockdown detox, persevering through hospitals and psych wards and rehabs, sticking it out in this degraded snake pit of a halfway house—and just as she’s six months sober, what happens? I’d start to doze off and dream that someone was telling me it was a mistake. I saw her empty hospital room, the flat slab of the bed; relived the 2 A.M. phone call. I was wide awake again.

  This wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t a mistake. This wasn’t the movie I’d imagined, where Janice was a hero and everything worked out okay in the end. This wasn’t in the papers or something I read online—“Homeless Kids Face Higher Incidence of HIV Infection, Duh.” This was reality. This was the redhead on the corner, and the scabs on her face were looking more and more like lesions. This was Sam.

  This was what I had signed up for. This was what I was going to see through.

  Chapter Nine

  Elopement

  Two weeks later, and there’d been no further word from Sam. No follow-up call, no letters—but no news is good news, I tried to tell myself. I’d have to settle for no news for now; it was better than most of the news I’d gotten from Sam in the past. Besides, I had news of my own to make.

  It was Bill’s thirtieth birthday, and he’d swapped days with a coworker so he could have the day off. We woke up late, took a long run together, and went to an opening-day afternoon showing of Batman Begins. We ate popcorn and candy for lunch, then strolled toward the park in the sunshine. “What do you want to do now?” he asked.

  Propose, I thought, my heartbeat quickening. Today was the day, and now was the time. I had to get him home and spring the ring on him. “I don’t know,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Maybe head home?”

  We were on our way home when Bill got a call from work—some bullshit Mac problem—they wanted him to come in and fix something. He snapped his phone shut, grumbling. “You’re not going down there, are you?” I asked, anxious.

  “I don’t want to, but apparently they can’t do a goddamn thing without me.”

  “Well, call them back and tell them you can’t.” My voice rose in frustration. We didn’t have a lot of time before the dinner plans we’d made with my dad and stepmom, and now Bill was in a shitty mood, and how was I going to ask him to marry me if he was all cranky and snappish, as I was now, too? We bickered—yes, we actually bickered on the day of our engagement—but then his phone rang again, and the problem had been solved, and by the time we got home, he was putting his arms around me and turning me to face him.

  “This is why our relationship is so important,” he said. “Because there’s all the bullshit and stress we both have to deal with, and then there’s you and me. And as stressed out as we get, I know you’re always on my side, and you know I’m always on yours.”

  I looked past his glasses into his green-brown eyes, and my pulse raced again. “Funny you should mention that.” I took a few steps to the cabinet I’d been using as a hiding place and pulled out the velvet box.

  “What’s this?” he asked, making greedy hands. “My present?” A pair of cuff links, he thought, or so he told me later.

  “This…I…” I flipped open the box to reveal the matching rings. I had this cute little speech prepared—Honey, we’re so crazy about each other, I think we should be committed—but it flew out of my head. “H…honey,” I stammered, mouth dry. “I love you, and I want us to be together. Always.”

  “Oh. Oh wow.” Bill gaped at the rings, the idea dawning on him. “Is this…Are you asking me…”

  By now I was crying too much to speak, so I nodded, laughing and crying as he rushed in to grab me, holding me so tight, kissing my face, and crying himself. “Oh, honey. Oh my god.”

  “So…yes?” I asked, over his shoulder.

  He drew back and looked at me like I was crazy, brilliant, possibly dangerous, totally irresistible. “YES,” he said.

  We ran to the bedroom and cemented the deal.

  Once we were showered and dressed for dinner, Bill called his family with the news; I called my brother. Bill called his best friends; I called mine. I heard him on the other side of the room, laughing. “I wasn’t expecting it, either!” I grinned over at him, cupping one ear. “I’ll tell him you said so!” We took a picture of ourselves together and e-mailed it to the rest of our friends—subject line: Committed! Then we took a cab uptown and met my father and stepmother at a restaurant in Midtown.

  “What’s different about us?” we demanded, holding up our ringed fingers.

  My stepmother’s hands flew to her mouth, and my father looked like he might plotz from joy. “You’re engaged!”

  And so we were. We spent the next week making lists, checking the calendar, planning locations and menus, listing our invitees. “Samantha,” said Bill, like, of course.

  I put my hands in the prayer position. “If she can get permission to come. She’s got to get off orientation, first. And there’ll be alcohol there; they might not let her come without a chaperone. Or at all. But I’ll write her and ask her, honey. That would be so awesome, if she could make it.”

  Everything made its way onto a list. We ran around town looking for venues, and I danced in front of him on the sidewalk, gesturing to where I thought we’d stand, where our families could be, how the whole production would flow.

  “So you think we can do this by September? That only gives us three months. We’ll have to book the place as soon as possible, get the invites out in the next two or three weeks…plus the food, the dress….”

  “Are you thinking you might like to invite your mom?” Bill asked delicately.

  Huh. Funny enough, the last time I’d seen my mom was six years earlier at her own wedding, to a guy I’d met only once before. Nice enough guy; nice enough affair. I sat at a table with my then-boyfriend and my brother and his girlfriend, kept my profile low. Toward the end of the event, my mother and I chatted alone for the length of one of her cigarettes, then I left, and we went back to exchanging greeting cards. “I’ve been to three of her weddings,” I said. “I guess I should invite her to one of mine.”

  I left her a message that night. “Hi, Mom. Just wanted to let you know that Bill and I got engaged, and I’ll be sending you an invitation to the wedding as soon as we have the date. Just wanted to share the good news. Hope all’s well with you. Bye.”

  So the wedding plans took shape, with the help of my dad and stepmom. We booked the banquet room at a nearby hotel, designed the invites, and set up an appointment with a baker to sit around and taste a variety of cakes. I tried not to go too Br
idezilla on anybody, tried not to talk too much about my dress or the flowers or the menu, tried to just live my life as usual—running in the morning, working, going to the shelter on Wednesdays. Except now I had something extra nice to think about, and a pretty ring to wear.

  I mailed an invitation to Sam’s halfway house, with a note attached, addressed to whomever it concerned: I hope you’ll consider letting Samantha attend this event; if there’s any way I can facilitate that, please let me know. Thank you sincerely, Janice Erlbaum. Drummed my fingers waiting for a reply. My mother had not replied to her invitation, either. But other friends and family were responding right and left; it was shaping up to be a very special day for us. “You two certainly are a happy couple,” marveled the baker, almost suspiciously, as she walked us to the elevator of her loft and bade us good-bye. “Most people aren’t nearly as relaxed and cheerful as you two.”

  Well, most people weren’t marrying Bill (or getting domestically partnered to him—we’d decided to save legal marriage until all of our friends were granted the same right). I felt like I’d just met him again, this adorable, funny, generous, patient guy who rubbed my shoulders at night, cleared the table after dinner, told me, “I’m happy to deal with the programs, Shmoo, if you want to take care of the flowers.” I still couldn’t believe I’d wound up with someone so even-tempered, so attentive, so unlike anyone I’d ever dated before. After six or seven months of being blinded by Sam, I was rubbing my eyes and blinking in amazement at the brilliant man I’d conned into becoming my partner.

  While I was making wedding arrangements, I took the opportunity to call the Disney reservation line and inquire about a week’s vacation in early December (“the best possible time to go,” according to Sam and her guidebook). She’d only be eleven months sober by then, but now that we knew her diagnosis, I felt like it was okay to let the extra month slide. Depending on her T cell count and viral load, I thought, time might be of the essence.