by Kaylee, Katy
So it was that Christina and I stood silently as a minister read a prayer, said the few words they say when they don’t know the deceased and then pat you on the back for holding out their hand for the donation envelope. She and I each threw a handful of dirt on the casket followed by a bouquet of red roses. Then we left.
We got into the car and I was going to take Christina home. I had no clue where we were at that point and it didn’t seem to be the sort of day to talk about it. I didn’t start any conversation, but she did.
“Can we go somewhere? You know, somewhere to talk? Not your place and not anywhere we’ve been before. Maybe drive up the shore little ways?”
I nodded. “Sure.” I didn’t have anywhere else to be, and to be truthful, all I wanted was to be with her. We found ourselves at a wood trestle table in a restaurant dedicated to the Vikings of Wisconsin, whomever they may be. We waited for a stein of beer and a platter of barbecued ribs. It was extremely awkward, and I knew we both felt it. They brought the food and drink and then left us alone. It was a Monday afternoon, not much going on. Most people were still in work.
“I want you to ask me the questions you’re putting off asking.” She was serious, I could tell by the look on her face.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t pretend. We’ve come this far without pretense, don’t start now.”
“Why did he call you and not me?”
“I’ve given that question some thought myself. I’m convinced that he didn’t want you to know why he was in the park. He thought I was the safer person, I guess.”
“But they must’ve already stabbed him when he called you.”
She nodded. “I know. I think he knew he was done for and maybe he didn’t want his final thoughts to be humiliation in front of you. I don’t know. It wouldn’t have made any difference you know. He was too far gone when I got there and the same would’ve happened if it had been you.”
I took a sip of my beer. “I know that. No one is blaming you.”
“He did.”
“He did? What did he blame you for?”
“For not taking the time to understand his true needs. I never truly listened to Macon much. He was always playing those infernal games, the sound up too loud, trying to intentionally annoy me. He knew I was worried about money and yet, he never went out to look for a job. He asked me to marry him, did you know that?”
“No. He never got that far. I threw them out of the house as soon as I found out you lived together. He tried to tell me it was innocent that you’d never been intimate.”
“He was telling you the truth. God knows, I wanted to. I did everything I could to make myself attractive. I tried to initiate it, but it was no good. It never would be good enough.”
“Why do you say that?”
She took a deep breath and went straight into it. “Nathan, you do know that Macon was gay, don’t you?”
For the second time in four days she saw my face go white. “No, I didn’t.”
“Does it matter?”
“No. He was my son and I loved him, with all his dents and scratches.”
“I wish I could have been as unconditionally loving as you are. When he didn’t hold up his end of our deal, I became angry and even resentful. There were times I made his life in absolute hell and he just patiently waited me out. It wasn’t until the end that he finally lost it, shouted at me, picked up his things and left. That’s a credit to you, you know.”
“I appreciate you saying that. I accept that Macon was a troubled person and I don’t think anyone was responsible for that, not even him. People just turn off that way sometimes.”
“I know this is a lousy time, but will I ever see you again?”
“Do you want to?”
“You know I love you, don’t you?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Will Macon be hanging over us?”
“Christina, to tell you the truth, I really don’t know. I’m in shock right now, as I’m sure you are. I think we need some time to take stock of things and to examine our own hearts. If we pick up where we left off, the process of grieving could pit us against one another. I don’t want that.”
She sighed and played with a strand of her hair, a sign that she was uncertain and vulnerable. “I understand.”
I nodded and motioned to the plate of ribs between us. “Have you had your fill?”
I knew she heard the double entendre. She was smart enough to get that. She nodded and I pulled her chair back for her, through some bills on the table and we left the restaurant, heading home. I pulled up at the end of the alley where the pitiful trailer sat. It seemed to be waiting for her, hungry to feed off her humiliation yet another day. I got out went around and opened her door, holding out my hand for her. She took it and stood up, brushing invisible wrinkles from her coat. “How much time before you will know?”
“It’s a fair question but I don’t have an answer for you. I’ve already decided I’m going to close my practice for a while, anyway. I’m going to try a little traveling. I really don’t know any more than that. I’m truthfully shooting from the hip.”
She opened her mouth as if to ask another question but thought the better of it. “Bye.”
I watched her back as she disappeared down the alley and into the junkie trailer. There had been a time not so very long before when I never would’ve allowed that to happen. That was before Macon died. Everything had changed now.
14
Christina
Life changed at that point. I wasn’t able to tell Nathan about the baby. He was too raw, too vulnerable and I knew he was a gentleman. He would delay his grieving and stay by my side, but not because he loved me. He would stay because it was the right thing to do. He was a man driven by guilt and therefore easily manipulated. I refused to take advantage of that. He had asked me about the birth control and in my feverish need for him, I had lied. That made it my fault and my responsibility. Not his.
I didn’t know if or when Nathan would be coming back. I asked myself what he even had to come back for. Sure, there was a house, but he could call an agent from out of town and have it sold. Yes, he had a going practice, but he was bright, personable and had easily grown the current practice. A new one would be no trouble to launch.
That left me. Was I enough to come back to? Would I become enough if I had a baby on my hip? I suspected I would, but I didn’t want him that way. No, not that way.
There was only one option for me, and that was to move forward under my own power. I couldn’t depend on Nathan to take care of me, that wasn’t fair. I couldn’t depend on anyone, it was no one’s responsibility but my own. So I let life just continue along. The morning sickness passed eventually and my tummy grew outward. I began to have cravings for things I couldn’t afford. I would stop at thrift shops on my way home from work and comb the tables for maternity clothes that would not be obvious. I hadn’t told them at work yet about my condition. I was always slender so I had a lot of time to hide it. I knew I would have to eventually. I needed their health insurance, and I needed my job to take care of my child. There was a free clinic nearby and they looked after me during my pregnancy. They were pretty good about it, giving me free vitamins and doing the occasional ultrasound to make sure everything looked okay. I was grateful.
Piece by piece I began to accumulate the things that babies need. Not knowing whether it was a boy or girl, I decided to go neutral and chose navy blues and reds and purples. Why not? I checked in with social services to find out daycare options. There were some, but not for an infant until they were at least a year old. That meant I would have to quit my job and stay home full-time. I cringed when I thought about it. I knew I had to come up with something, and so I began to look online for work from home positions. I was competing with the rest of the world, I learned quickly, and they worked for a fraction of what I could afford to work for. Nevertheless, I used my college training and began writing blog posts for psychologists or ot
hers in the psychology field. The pay wasn’t great but at least I could be home. They were accommodating and I could start as soon as the baby was born which meant I would keep my current job for the medical insurance. Everything worked out when you really needed it to.
It was one week before I was due to quit my job. The doctor said I was due any day and boy I could feel it. I got cramps regularly down the backs of my legs, making it almost impossible to sit still and even watch television. I had scrimped and saved and slowly managed to accumulate formula and diapers and the things babies need. Me? I would eat Ramen noodles and boil the crap out of a soup bone to survive. Winter was over and spring was beginning. I knew I’d have one big savings and that was my Uber fares. I’d see to it that I didn’t have to ride anywhere, but I could walk and push the cheap stroller I’d picked up at the goodwill for the baby. Sure, I had some distant family I could’ve called on, but I wasn’t there problem either. Women before me had been single and raised entire families. Why couldn’t I do it?
The uber let me off the end of the alley and I instantly smelled smoke. I heard sirens in the distance but they grew closer and with horror I saw flames shooting out of the top of my trailer. Someone must’ve called the fire department. I ran, or rather waddled as quickly as I could toward it, hoping I could pull out something to salvage, but it was too far gone. Trailers were notorious for going up in flames in a matter of minutes. I had no renters insurance — that was for rich people. And now, I had absolutely nothing and nowhere to stay. The fireman took me to a shelter for the night, run by the Red Cross. There is absolutely no privacy and they weren’t really prepared for a pregnant woman. I saw their nervousness and their faces and knew I had to find somewhere else to go. My insurance was good through the end of the month, so at least that part was fine.
I went to the public library and looked up everything I could find about forcing your labor to start. In some obscure magazine I found the mention of drinking castor oil, a noxious product of the castor bean plant. In its powdered state, it was ricin, one of the most toxic substances on the planet. It’s oil, however, was as old as the hills, having been hawked as a tonic to cure everything from depression to a male’s lack of performance. According to the article, if you drink 2 ounces of the stuff and you are near labor, it would start. If you weren’t ready, you just end up having to sit in the bathroom. It was a chance I had to take. I stopped in the corner drug store and bought the smallest bottle I could find, it held exactly 2 ounces, how convenient. I went outside around the corner where I found a bench and sat down to try and pour the stuff down my gullet. It was utterly miserable and I gagged and threw up everything I drunk so far onto the grass. Resolved to do it, I went and bought a second bottle, and this time I added a bottle of lemon lime soda. I decided to quickly take a sip of the oil and chase it with the soda which was effervescent and help the oil slide down my throat more quickly. I gagged twice more but I didn’t throw it up and eventually the bottle was empty. I sat back, waiting to see what would happen.
Sure enough, I began cramping about an hour later. I gave it some time, making sure this wasn’t a false alarm. It wasn’t. I use the rest of my money to call an Uber and it dropped me off at the emergency entrance to Memorial Hospital. They took me in a wheelchair and put me to bed for the 10 most hellish hours I’d ever known in my young life.
15
Nathan
They say you should go to Switzerland to ski and friends to eat. You should drink wine from the vineyards of Italy and dance and lederhosen at the German Oktoberfest. They suggest deep-sea fishing among the sharks off Australia’s southern coast and to watch Finland’s volcanoes feed the ocean floors with its molten blackness. For me, it was one long hell and none of those things helped in any way.
I tried the restaurants but eating alone was tiresome and conspicuous. I made a few friends here and there and was invited to parties where women would throw themselves at my feet. I was both an American, and a doctor — a very desirable combination as far as they were concerned. As for me, I found them to liberated, lacking in personal hygiene and obvious in their intentions. They wanted to come to America and I was their ticket, first class. One by one they presented themselves and one by one I pushed them away.
I was riding a camel doing a tour to the pyramids when I realized there was only one cure for my sadness. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to Christina and tie up the loose ends we left littered around us. I wanted to start over, just she and I without Macon, without sex therapy and without interference from any direction. If she wanted to, I turn right around and go back to Europe, bringing her with me. Maybe she’d like that. If she didn’t, though, it could be just that many more weeks of hell. It was up to her, not to me. I had no doubt in my mind that I was in love with her and that I couldn’t be happy with anyone else. She and I had history, in a strange and almost sick sense, and yet it held us together as though Macon had been our child. Macon was gone. I had accepted that. I was going through the stages of grieving and I knew them well. I had explained them hundreds of times to my own patients. Now was my turn, unexpectedly so.
So, when the tour finally ended and the pyramids were yet one more wonder of the world behind my back, I found a taxi and then the airport. It took me home. I climbed off the plane in O’Hare and wondered what it was that I saw in the place. The traffic was abominable as was the personalities of the people that live there. In fact, that whole region wasn’t younger but dirtier version of the Europe that I’d left behind. Its only salvation was that Christina was there. I thought about taking a bus to Milwaukee, but my stomach was bothering me, and I preferred to have my own transportation, so I rented a car. I got to the northern suburbs of Chicago and had to pull over quickly, vomiting onto the pavement beneath the car. At first it was every couple minutes, and then it became nonstop. I pulled my shaving kit from my bag on the back seat and held it under my chin, using it as a basin as I searched for signs of a hospital. Intuitively I knew something was very wrong. It wasn’t long before I saw the signs mentioning Milwaukee. I had to hang on. I knew better than to try to go to the house, there was no one there to look after me. I rationalized that I must’ve been contaminated by something on my trip back. It was coming on quickly and hard. There was a rest area I headed to and as I turned on the blinker to pull in, I felt another wave coming over me and jammed the car into park as I stumbled out of it onto the grass, a stream of vomit and my bowels emptying themselves around me. I remembered voices and then I remembered nothing.
16
Christina
When it was finally over, they put a baby boy into my arms. I named him Michael, not after anyone in particular but just because I liked the name. It was a solid, respectable name and a man with a name like that could go as far as he wanted to go. My labor had been hard and although Michael was almost term, he had a bit of jaundice and they wanted to keep him in the hospital for an extra day until his bilirubin level rose to normal. They let me stay even though they didn’t have to. I told them I had nowhere to go because my house had just burned down.
I visited Michael in the nursery and they assured me he was doing very well and would be able to go home the next day. That didn’t give me much time to make a plan of action and when I went back to my room I began to cry. It was a very kind young nurse who had been with me through Michael’s birth. Her name was Penny and I laughed because she had copper colored hair. I had cursed wildly during labor and she took it all in stride, smiling and asking if that was the best I could do. We’d hit it off from the beginning and even after her shift was done, she came to my room and found me crying.
“Are you okay?” She asked me.
“If you mean do I hurt anywhere, no, not really. And Michael is fine, I just visited him in the nursery. But as for the rest of me, no, I’m not fine.”
Penny pulled a chair closer to the side of the bed and opened her purse pulling out a skein of yarn and a pair of knitting needles. She unwound a few feet of t
he yarn and they lay the skein back in her purse to hold it as she pulled at it and knitted.
I was curious. “What are you making?”
“A baby blanket,” she answered.
“Are you going to have the baby?” I was smiling, the irony of having your baby at work.
She shook her head calmly. “No, I not able to have any children. I had a little run in with some cancer a few years ago and they had to do hysterectomy. I’m not married, so you can see the odds are very slim that I’m going to have children. But that doesn’t stop me from making blankets. I see lots of babies go through here who don’t have enough.”
“Gee, it’s very generous of you.”
“No, not at all. He gives me something useful to do so I don’t think too much. Everyone needs a break when they work at a hospital, it’s the only way you stay sane.”
“I could see how that would be true.”
“I’ve got a few hours here on this game. Once you tell me a little about your life and why you’re crying?”
That is how I spent 2 ½ hours telling a perfect stranger the story of my life. It was a total confession. I talked about my childhood, about going to college and about Macon. I talked about Nathan and how he was wandering Europe and I’d probably never see him again. She asked me if I was in love with him and I nodded. “It won’t do me much good, though. He’s not here to be loved.”
Penny shared some of her own story and it brought a bond between the two of us. I found myself wishing that I lived near her so that we could see one another regularly. I knew we become close friends. When the next day came for discharge, Penny was there. She brought a baby blanket she’d made some time before. It was blue and white and had a ruffled edge. She wrapped Michael and it and handed him to me. “There’s a little card inside with my phone number. I got yours off the records, but don’t tell anyone because I could lose my job for that. Anyway, I think you could use a friend and I know I can. Let’s keep in touch, shall we?”