“Well, let me know if there are any other titles she wants. I can pull some extra copies from the book room once I start.” Julia lavishes gifts on my kids whenever she sees them. She’s probably gotten both of them half the books on their shelves.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m sure Violet will love that.”
“But you called to tell me something,” Julia said, “and I hijacked the whole conversation.”
“You didn’t hijack anything,” I said. “I was just calling to say hi.”
I couldn’t do it. Even with Julia, I couldn’t confess to what I’d done, what I’d let myself believe, what I said to you, how wrong I was. And I certainly couldn’t confess that deep inside, in spite of everything, I still wanted to leave Darren and be with you.
You just—you made me feel so alive, Gabe. I don’t even know if I can put it into words. The world seemed bigger when you were around, filled with possibility. I seemed smarter, sexier, more beautiful. You saw me in a way that no one else did. You understood who I was at my core, and you didn’t want to change me. You wanted me because of. Darren wanted me in spite of. I think that’s the best way to describe it. And it took every ounce of self-control I had not to give in to my desire to call you, to be with you. But I would never forgive myself if I hurt my kids. Even if it meant surrendering that feeling forever.
lxxi
In the week after we saw each other, I kept trying to push you out of my mind, but news of what was happening between Israel and Gaza filled newspapers and Internet feeds. He’s there! the universe kept saying. Think about him! I scoured every photo for its credit, looking for your name. I found it on a particularly arresting image. Five women, all in headscarves, all wailing. One was reaching out in front of her, as if to stop whatever was going on outside the frame. It was a funeral, I read, for a Palestinian boy who was killed. So I knew—you’d left Jerusalem and were in Gaza City.
A few weeks later, the news media started calling the conflict an actual war. I was glued to the television, horrified as battles erupted while I watched. There were so many children there; some looked like they could have been in first grade like Violet, or in Liam’s preschool class. I watched a journalist interview a woman who explained that she didn’t let any of her three children sleep in the same room at night, so that if a bomb hit one part of her house, it wouldn’t kill all her children at once. Then I saw the families who didn’t have houses left at all.
“Want to watch CSI?” Darren asked, dropping next to me on the couch, while I had the news on.
“Sure,” I said, changing the channel. But I couldn’t follow the storyline. My mind—and my heart—were still in Gaza City.
lxxii
I was at work when you called.
“Gabe,” I said.
“I can’t do this anymore,” you answered. “I’m coming home.”
My heart sped up in my chest. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” you told me. “The women, the children.” Your voice broke on the word. “I just keep thinking about you. About the Warwick. I was wrong when I asked you to come to Jerusalem. I should have offered to stay in New York. Is Darren still with that Linda? Have you talked to him about it?”
My breath caught. That was what I’d wanted—that was the offer I’d hoped for. But it didn’t matter now. I stalled.
“Gabe, you’re doing good work there. I saw your photograph on the front page of the New York Times. You’re showing the world what’s happening. You’re living your dream.”
I heard you take a ragged breath. “I thought I’d be able to make a real difference, but . . . they’re just pictures, Luce. They haven’t changed a thing. The world is still shit. And now . . . it feels like too much of a sacrifice. I miss you. I think about you all the time.”
“I miss you too,” I said. “But, Gabe, if you come back . . . I can’t promise . . . don’t come for me, Gabe. Don’t make me choose. Darren wasn’t cheating. He . . . he bought me a house. The house where we met. Linda was the real estate agent.” It broke my heart to say it, but I knew it was the right thing to do—for my kids, for my life. I needed to be responsible, to focus on my marriage, to keep my family together.
I listened to you inhale, exhale, inhale, waiting for your response.
“Is that what you want, Lucy?” you said softly. “Will that fix everything?”
I closed my eyes. “No,” I said. “It’s not. It won’t. But it’s a start. I told you I won’t leave my kids. I won’t break up my family.”
I imagined the pain I knew would be visible on your face. I tried to harden my heart to it.
“I think I need to come back anyway,” you said, your voice filled with emotion. “I think I have to come for me. I’m going to give my notice. Hopefully I’ll be home by the end of the summer. And . . . I won’t expect anything from you. But life is so short, Lucy. I want you to be happy. I want us both to be happy.”
I didn’t know how to respond because I wanted us both to be happy too. I just didn’t see a way to make it happen. “Okay,” I said. “Stay safe until then. We’ll . . . talk when you’re back home.”
“I love you, Lucy,” you said.
I couldn’t leave your words hanging there, not when I felt the same way.
“Me too,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes. “I love you, too, Gabe.” I did, I do, I always have. I realized that then. I love Darren, too, but what you and I have is different. If I’d never met you, maybe Darren would be enough. But I’ve taken a bite of the forbidden fruit. I’ve eaten from the tree of knowledge. I’ve seen how much more there is.
I knew I’d have to forget that, ignore what could be. Because I like Gabe better didn’t seem like an acceptable reason to destroy my marriage with a good, generous man. It didn’t seem like an acceptable reason to do that to my kids.
I took the rest of the day off from work. I went home and fell asleep on the couch holding on to Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
lxxiii
There are some things we know without knowing them.
I should have realized it when I fell asleep in Liam’s bed at eight thirty, in the middle of reading him If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
I should have realized it when my period was five days late, and then ten.
But I didn’t realize it until I woke up knowing I was going to vomit before I made it to the bathroom. I reached for the garbage pail next to my nightstand.
“Oh, God,” Darren said, jolting up in bed. “Are you sick?”
I wiped my mouth with my hand as my brain quickly put the pieces together. “I’m going to go with pregnant,” I told him, groaning. “Do we have any pregnancy tests in the cabinet?”
I tied the plastic bag that was in the trash can in an airtight knot, as the rest of the information filtered through my brain. I was counting weeks. I’d been so sure I wasn’t ovulating when you and I were together, when Darren and I were together later that day. But I must’ve been wrong. My whole body flashed hot as one thought engulfed my consciousness: Whose baby was it?
“Wait, are you serious?” Darren asked.
“As serious as the Defenestration of Prague,” I told him, trying to keep the shock from registering on my face. The horror.
Darren jumped out of bed and enveloped me in a hug. “This is fantastic!” he said. “We’re filling up this whole apartment with tiny humans! You know I always wanted more. Our new house must be a good-luck charm.”
“It must,” I said, thinking the exact opposite, my mind spinning.
Do I tell him? Don’t I tell him? If I told him, would he leave? Kick me out? Would that be it, our family up in flames? I couldn’t tell him. But what if it was yours? How could I let him raise your son?
“I’m going to puke again,” I said to Darren, running into the bathroom.
I couldn’t believe that thi
s was my life. It was like a soap opera.
I knew you’d planned to be back in New York again soon. I decided I should wait. I didn’t need to tell you. At least not over the phone. At least not yet.
I wish I’d made a different choice. If I’d known our time was limited, if I’d known we’d end up here, like this, I would have reached out that day. I wish I could rewind time and make that call. Maybe you would’ve come home. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened to you at all.
lxxiv
There are so many moments that change a person’s world. Some are because of a decision that’s made. Others, I think, might be because of the universe, fate, God, a higher power, whatever you want to call it. I don’t know. I’ve been wrestling with this question for thirteen years now.
That Tuesday I was on my way to work in a taxicab. Maybe it was the uncertainty or the guilt or the fact that I hadn’t spoken to you about it yet, but the nausea those few weeks after I realized I was pregnant was so awful that I didn’t want to risk riding the subway and vomiting on the stranger next to me. So I was taking cabs. Darren offered to get a driver to take me to and from work, but that felt excessive. Instead, I hailed a cab each morning. And sometimes on the way home too. Whoever named it “morning sickness” was an optimist. I carried at least two plastic bags in my purse at all times, but so far I hadn’t actually thrown up in a cab. My office was another story. I think I might have scared my poor assistant into celibacy.
I was breathing slowly, in through my nose, out through my mouth, trying to calm my body down. And then my cell phone rang. It was a number I didn’t know, but I picked up, in case it was something having to do with Violet or Liam. Becoming a mother changed my call-screening habits. The last thing I ever wanted to do was not pick up when one of my kids needed me.
“Hello?” I said.
“Is this Lucy Carter Maxwell?”
“Yes,” I answered, though there wasn’t anywhere other than Facebook that I was listed that way.
“This is Eric Weiss,” the person said. “I’m an executive editor at the Associated Press. I work with Gabriel Samson.”
“Yes?”
“I’m calling to let you know that Gabe has been hurt.”
He stopped talking. I stopped breathing.
“Hurt, but he’s okay?”
“He’s in a hospital in Jerusalem.”
Then my brain started catching up with my heart.
“Wait,” I said, “why are you calling me about this?”
I heard Eric take a deep breath on the other end of the phone. “I’m looking at Gabe’s personnel file, and you’re listed as his emergency contact and his medical proxy. It says you’re a good friend of his? We’re going to need you to make some decisions.”
“Decisions?” I repeated. “About what? What happened?”
“I’m sorry,” Eric said, “let me start over.”
Then he told me the story. You were in Gaza City. There was fighting in Shuja’iyya. There was an explosion, and you were too close. It happened too quickly for you to run. An Israeli medic took care of you in the field and the AP got you to a hospital in Jerusalem, but you hadn’t been responding to any stimuli and you couldn’t breathe on your own. He told me he didn’t think you’d recover. You had signed a DNR, but no one knew until you were already hooked up to machines, and now they needed my permission to take you off them.
“No,” I kept saying into the phone. “No, no, no, no, no.”
“Ma’am?” the cabdriver asked me. “Is everything all right?”
“Please turn around,” I whispered to him. “I need to go home.”
I went back to the apartment, climbed back into bed, and cried. For hours. Then I called Kate, giving her the broad strokes of what had happened to you.
“I think I have to go to Jerusalem,” I told her. “I can’t tell them to take Gabe off those machines before I see him again. I can’t let him die with no one there but strangers—or wake up, confused and hurting, all alone.”
“There’s a war there,” Kate said, as if the thoughts were unspooling in her mind as she was verbalizing them. “But I work with a corporation that’s headquartered in Tel Aviv, and they seem to be business as usual. So I don’t think it’s as dangerous as it sounds. At least not on the Israeli side.”
“And I’m pregnant,” I said, talking over her.
“You’re pregnant?” she sounded disconcerted, jumping from one train of conversation to the next. “When did . . . I didn’t think you wanted any more children. Hold on. Let me just—”
I heard the door to her office shut.
“Okay, so what’s going on?”
“It might be Gabe’s baby,” I said, quietly. “I don’t know.” I still hadn’t told her anything about us or about what had happened at the Warwick, which was why I hadn’t told her I was pregnant either. I was too ashamed, too worried about what she would think of me. But I’d reached a point where I didn’t care. I needed her. I needed someone to lean on.
“Oh, Lucy,” she said. “Lucy.” She paused for a moment. Then she said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Never mind, we can talk more later. For now: do you want me to come to Jerusalem with you?”
I made a sound that married a sob with a sigh of relief. “I love you,” I told her. “I’m sorry I didn’t . . . You’re the best best friend in the world.”
“Don’t you forget it,” she said.
“But even though I’m pregnant, even though there’s a war, I think I need to go to Jerusalem by myself.”
• • •
I KNEW EXPLAINING the situation to Darren—especially without explaining what had happened at the Warwick—wasn’t going to be easy. And probably I shouldn’t have tried. If I’d been serious about focusing on my marriage, I would’ve signed what I needed to sign from New York and told Eric Weiss that the doctors should do whatever they felt was best. But even though I knew that was what I should do, I couldn’t. Especially not if the baby I was carrying was ours. How could I explain to that child that I’d abandoned its father when he needed me most?
“Are you kidding?” Darren asked, his face incredulous, when I pulled him into our bedroom right after he got home from work. “You want me to let my pregnant wife fly into a war zone so she can sit at her ex-lover’s bedside?”
The way he said it made me more resolute. “It’s not as dangerous as it sounds,” I said. “And, Darren, I’m not asking you to let me do anything.”
“So you’re telling me you’re going? I have no say?” He was pacing in front of our bed. “Why the fuck did that asshole make you his medical proxy?”
I felt my eyes widen in shock. Darren almost never swore, and his voice was laced with such vitriol.
“I’m telling you I want to do this,” I said. “I’m telling you I need to do this, or I’ll regret it forever.” My voice choked up, and as I was saying those words, I was wondering: Would I break up my marriage over this? I’d asked you not to come back to New York for me, not to make me choose, but when it came down to it, I wondered if I’d choose you.
“Do you understand there’s a war there? Are planes even flying?”
I’d checked before he came home. “El Al is,” I said, stopping the trembling in my voice. “And they have the Iron Dome. It’s not like I’m going to Gaza. I’ll be safe.”
“What if something goes wrong with the baby?”
“Their emergency medicine is even better than ours,” I said. “I read about it online.” It was not the time to tell him that the baby might be yours. I wondered if it would ever be the time to tell him.
I could see Darren was calming down. I could see he was playing out the scenarios in his head and realizing this was an argument he wasn’t easily going to win.
“Please trust me,” I said. “This is something I need to do.”
He massaged his forehead for a
moment.
“So help me God, Lucy,” he said finally. “I don’t know what it is about you and that man, how he keeps pulling you back into his orbit. He left you ten years ago. I’d think you wouldn’t forget something like that. If you have to go, go. But I want you back as soon as possible. By Sunday at the latest. It’s not safe there.”
“Fine,” I said. If I left tomorrow, that would give me three days in Jerusalem. I’d have liked more time, but if I wanted to come back to a marriage that wasn’t going to disintegrate upon reentry, I knew I had to compromise. And Darren really is a good man—even as upset as he was, he still agreed. That’s why all of this is so hard. It would be easier if he were a jerk.
So I booked my flight, and a return trip for Sunday morning. I packed my bag. I called Kate and told her my plan.
After everything that had happened between you and me, I couldn’t believe that this was where life had led us.
lxxv
I boarded with the rest of the first-class cabin and found myself seated next to an older Orthodox woman. Her head was covered with a patterned silk kerchief, tied behind her neck. She smiled at me when I sat down.
I smiled back but was already concentrating on breathing slowly, trying to will away the nausea, trying to ignore the briny taste in the back of my throat. It didn’t matter, though. While the rest of the plane was boarding, I knelt down in the airplane bathroom and vomited. “Please don’t let this happen the entire flight,” I said out loud as I flushed and wiped my mouth.
“Okay?” the woman asked me in heavily accented English, when I sat down again. My face must’ve been pale.
“Pregnant,” I told her, placing my hand low on my stomach. Then added, “A baby.” I wasn’t sure how much English she knew.
She nodded and rummaged around in her purse. Then she handed me a bag of candy with Hebrew writing on it. “This helps,” she said. “I eat it on the airplane.”
The Light We Lost Page 22