“Bless you,” Dahlia says. “Your immune system must be damaged from all the excitement of getting them there.”
“Probably. I dropped them both off about three hours before their flight. Mom brought three suitcases, making Dick claim one of hers as his own.”
“What are they like together? Does she ride right over him?”
“Not really. Actually, no. She wanted to get there four hours in advance, but Dick put his foot down.”
“Really?” Dahlia says. “And she let him?”
“Barely. But I checked their flight status online, and they’ve departed. Sally and Dick are somewhere over the Continental United States.”
In the background behind Dahlia, Mia can hear the kids splashing in the pool. During the long blazing Phoenix summer (which coincides with the slow tax season), Dahlia and her children are either in the pool or inside, the heat outside oppressive, flat, white with unrelenting sunshine.
“So how are you?” Dahlia asks softly, as if the question won’t hurt in a quiet tone. “How are the boys? Harper?”
Mia stands up and walks out onto her deck. Spring turned into summer all at once, the green of March, April, and early May morphing all of the sudden into a blond June. In a week, Mia will start teaching a summer school class, “Introduction to Fiction Writing,” which filled the first week it was offered on the schedule.
Mia sighs, thinking about all the incomplete, half-written stories she will be reading. About the hours of time where she will have to push Robert out of her head as she tries to concentrate on words. “I’m okay, Dahls. I start teaching soon. It’ll keep my mind off it. Well, a bit. Lucien is fine, but Harper’s still kind of a mess. He pretends he’s fine, but I know he’s really upset. He even agreed to go see someone to talk about it. When he gets back from backpacking in Europe.”
“When does he leave? And Lucien’s off for somewhere too, right?”
The phone clutched between her jaw and shoulder, Mia leans down to deadhead a bushy lavender plant, crunching the dried flower heads in her palm. “Harper leaves in about three weeks. And Lucien is working for a couple of months and then is going to hitchhike across the country to the Republican convention. He wants to protest there and then head up to Maine to see a friend. Both of them will really be gone.”
As she says the words, Mia realizes that when the boys leave, she will be here alone. For the first time in over twenty years, she will be living by herself.
“Look, come visit me after your class,” Dahlia says. “Bring Kenzie. You two would have a blast. You could drive to Sedona. Have a ‘mystical’ retreat. Talk with aliens or spirits.”
Mia rubs her nose, trying to keep back another sneeze. Her eyes are watering and her throat feels full of needles. “I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to do here. Things to fill in. Replace the furniture that Ford took.”
“That asshole,” Dahlia says.
“Then there are two of us,” Mia reminds her. “I’m an asshole, too.”
“No, you’re not. You haven’t been having an affair for years.” Dahlia sounds to Mia like she did when she was five, belligerent and close to tears at the same time.
“But I may as well have been.” Mia knows this is the truth. She hadn’t been fooling around, but her characters had been, cheating and betraying for years and years, longer even than Ford. Both of them felt their marriage shred and rip, and neither of them could say the words, manage the truth. Both of them hid behind the bodies of others.
“Look, I’ve got to go,” she says before Dahlia can argue with her. “I think I’m going to call Inland. I haven’t been feeling very good, and I don’t want to start teaching sounding like a frog.”
“Okay,” Dahlia says. “But—but take care, okay? And say hi to the boys for me.”
“You, too. Say hi to everyone. Bye,” Mia says, hanging up the phone and staring out into the valley spread before her in grass and oak and pine and finding her breath, which seems to get lost these days, hiding under and between her ribs. Sometimes air itself seems like a gift. So does food, or at least her enjoyment of it. And sleep, too. It is as if divorce or betrayal or loss—and she isn’t exactly sure what she is mourning: Ford or Robert or both—came with its own specific symptoms. Nothing any doctor at Inland could give her could cure them. Not even Robert at this point.
But this cold! Inside the house, Mia grabs tissues out of the box on the kitchen table, blows and wipes her nose, and begins to rummage through the spice cabinet, looking for the cold medicine she bought last year when Harper was sick. But it seems to be gone. Maybe it was something else Ford wanted.
Mia shakes her head and closes the cabinet door. What Ford wanted. What hadn’t he wanted? Not unexpectedly, he’d grown attached to all the things Mia had—plates and cups and pillows and paintings and silverware. Furniture and beds and books. Just as she had predicted, they’d sniped at and argued with each other, both of them holding back words when Harper walked in the room they were hunkered down in, grabbing silver or picture frames or vases from each another.
Now, the house seems like a set. It is as if someone had hastily put together rooms that resembled Mia’s house, but forgotten some of the most crucial details: the candlesticks they’d bought together in Big Sur, the water color of California hills that used to hang over the mantel, the large stuffed chair Ford found at Macy’s.
Leaning against the stove, Mia blows her nose, coughs, and looks at the phone. She has to go to the doctor, even if it means going to Inland and chancing a meeting with Robert. She can’t start the summer quarter off this way—deaf from fluid in her ears, squealing from a sore throat, wheezy with mucus. She needs to try to wheedle something miraculous from her doctor, not that she’s ever actually seen her “primary care physician.” Whenever she makes an appointment, he’s too busy, so Mia ends up with a nurse practitioner. But at this point, she doesn’t care.
Mia looks at the phone and then at the phone number list on the bulletin board next to it. She sighs, knowing that she has to take care of herself now. No one else will tell her to go to the doctor. No one else will run down to Rite Aid for cough syrup and Echinacea. No one will heat a bowl of soup and bring it to her on the couch.
She starts to laugh at her melodramatic riff and then dials Inland’s customer service center, wanting to get this part over with. After about ten minutes on hold, Mia finally is able to make an appointment for the following morning with yet another nurse practitioner.
“If you don’t want to see the nurse, I can schedule you with Dr. Rutsala next Tuesday at 12?” the woman says in a question, already knowing how Mia will answer.
Mia writes down her appointment information and hangs up. She sighs and walks down the hall past the bedrooms—Harper’s, Lucien’s, Ford’s and hers. Now just hers. She leans against the doorjamb and stares at the bed. It’s not the bed either boy was conceived on, that one a cheapie they bought in college at a mattress discounter with student loan money and later gave to the Salvation Army.
No, this king-sized bed was a much later purchase, thick and high and cozy, fluffy with a feather mattress and goose down pillows. When Mia wakes up in the morning, she finds herself at the edge of what used to be Ford’s side, as if she’s spent the night searching for him. She walks in the room and sits down on the bed, rubbing her hand along the comforter. Mia loved sleeping with Ford, the hours against his warm back sometimes the best part of a hard day. Maybe she’d forgotten who he was, what they were—maybe she didn’t long for him in the way she wanted to--but she desired his known-ness, his warm, known ass. His familiarity.
But all that knowledge, all that comfort, wasn’t enough.
Mia lies down, her head almost whirling as she does, her nose and eyes and forehead feeling like they are going to burst. So does her heart, all the blood in her body pulsing in her chest with memory.
What she wants is to sleep for a long, long time and to wake up feeling better. Whole. Completely different. Except, of course, she th
inks as her mind starts to wander, everything is completely different already.
“I saved a little kid today,” Lucien says, passing the salad to Kenzie.
“What happened?” Mia asks, as she sits down and pushes in to the table. She cuts the lasagna into hot squares and begins to serve it onto plates as Harper passes the sliced sourdough bread.
“No one was watching him. He just sort of walked into the pool and then walked all the way to the bottom. He sank like a rock. Usually little kids float a bit longer.”
They all look up at Lucien, and then Mia laughs. “What? There’s some kind of guideline? One year-olds float for five seconds? Five-year-olds a minute? What about adults?”
Lucien holds out his plate for lasagna. “Adults sputter and flail, but they float for a long time. But they’re more dangerous. Like octopuses when you try to save them. The next thing you know, you’re the one on the bottom of the pool.”
For a second, her head pulsing from cold and fear, Mia wants Lucien to quit being a lifeguard. She sees him limp on the wavery bottom of the pool, his tan, strong body pale under the gallons and gallons of chlorinated water. But she looks up at him, and sees how strong he is. He’s conquered drugs. He’s gone from imagining he was the center of the universe to knowing he is just a man. He will save children all summer and then go to protest the Republicans.
And what about Harper? He will fly to Europe where trains are exploding and militants and terrorists are plotting and will embark on an adventure in the mountains. He will be surrounded by good kids and trustworthy adults, but angry people don’t care who they kill as long as they make a point.
So much to worry about. So very much to worry about and yet, nothing to worry about because worrying won’t change a thing.
“Well, tell the parents of those kids to pay better attention.”
“Why don’t you go up there and give them a good lecture, Mia,” Kenzie says. “I bet you could run some seminars. Call them something like, ‘Learn to Pay Attention or I’ll Kill You’ classes.”
“Don’t tempt her, Kenzie,” Harper says. “She’d do it.”
“I know,” Kenzie says. “She’ll do anything.”
For a second in their laughter, Mia catches Kenzie’s eye and they both stop laughing and look at their meals. Harper and Lucien begin a conversation, and then Mia looks at Kenzie, shrugging. Kenzie winks, and they turn to the boys and listen to their conversation.
While Harper and Lucien watch television, Mia and Kenzie sit out on the front deck. Kenzie is smoking one of her illicit cigarettes from the pack she always carried around in her purse. Mia would like to have a glass of wine, but she’s a little high from the Cold and Flu Formula she found in the back on her medicine chest. If she takes anything else, and she might slip into a coma.
“Why is something so bad, so good?” Kenzie exhales a white triangle of smoke.
“I don’t know. Ask Lucien. He can tell you all about addiction. In fact, he might do an intervention on you this second.”
“Bitch,” Kenzie says, taking in a huge drag.
“Well, it’s true. You need help.”
Kenzie shakes her head. “I know. But at least it’s only one cigarette a week or so.”
“So only a part of one lung looks like charred hamburger.”
Kenzie laughs. “Do we have to go through this every time?”
“Probably.”
Mia sits back in her wooden chair and wipes her nose. Kenzie smokes her cigarette as the night turns from purple to black. One bright star rises and blinks over the waves of oak trees covering the hills. The boys turn off the television and go back into one of the bedrooms to play a computer games. A bat swoops over the deck, twirling in a food chase dance.
“Has he called?” Kenzie asks.
“Yeah. He’s all settled in with Karen. He wants Harper to come over next weekend.”
“Not Ford. Robert.”
Mia knows that if she starts to cry with this cold, her face will indeed explode, so she breathes through her mouth and closes her eyes. She hears Kenzie’s deep, smoker’s inhale.
“No. And he must have come home from Honduras by now. At least I think so. I hoped he’d call. But no.”
Mia bites the inside of her cheek, willing her feelings to stop. Stop. She doesn’t have the energy to think about Robert. How can she? She has a divorce, two boys, a summer school class, her writing, and her wounded heart to care for. Robert didn’t call, didn’t officially break up with her, didn’t email. Robert doesn’t deserve one tear or sigh or moan or sleepless night.
“I was wrong,” Kenzie says, stamping out her cigarette.
Wiping her eyes, Mia turns to Kenzie. “What do you mean?”
“About Robert. I’m sorry.”
Kenzie’s eyes glint in the darkness, the light from the house a fire in her pupils. Mia sighs. “It seemed wrong, I know. There was nothing truthful about it. You were—“
“I was the bitch,” Kenzie interrupted. “Jealous. I was thinking, why does she get all the love? Ford at home, and Robert outside of it. But I didn’t know about Ford.”
“Kenz, I told you all along how I felt about Ford.”
“No, about how he felt. About what he was doing. I guess I wish that if someone loves you, that’s enough. It doesn’t have to be reciprocal totally. Like that’s a myth. A dream. Some kind of fantasy that writers have made up.”
Kenzie stands up and walks to the deck rail, looking up into the sky. “Because for me, just finding that has been hard. Impossible.”
For a terrible instant, Mia is in Robert’s bed, feeling his body next to hers, looking into his eyes. She sees him in Bakersfield, hears his story, feels the tears on his neck. But then the truth pushes into that bedroom memory, the motel memory, showing her what is real: Robert sitting on his couch in his living room. Robert letting her leave.
Mia blows her nose and swallows. “Maybe it is a dream. Do you see it happening now?”
Turning from the rail, Kenzie shakes her head. “Mia, I couldn’t say this right away because of Ford leaving, but if you really love Robert—“ Mia tries to interrupt but Kenzie says, “Stop. Listen. If you really love Robert, you should try it again. Talk with him. Maybe he was saying something you couldn’t hear that day. Maybe there is more to the story than you know.”
Because Mia’s ears are full of fluid, Kenzie almost sounds like she’s talking under water. Mia stares at her friend, her best friend.
“It hurts,” Mia says finally.
Kenzie walks over to her, kneels down by the chair. “I know.”
Now Mia starts to cry, unable to stop the wave of feeling she’s been tamping down all day. She leans onto Kenzie’s shoulder, and her friend hugs her, lets her cry, not caring about catching her cold. In the dark night, Mia finally feels it all. In the room of her sadness, she sees Ford and Robert and her mother’s flat chest. She sees her boys and herself. She sees Kenzie smoking a cigarette alone.
“No,” she moans into Kenzie’s shirt.
“Yes,” Kenzie says, squeezing her tight. “Yes.”
“I cannot prescribe anything for this but rest and fluids,” the nurse practitioner says. “You have a cold.”
Mia wants to tell her that she has more than a cold. In fact, she wishes she could force the woman to check her heart. All night, her chest ached, right through to her back. As she lay alone in her king-sized bed, she imagined she was having a heart attack. Like the book that she read to Sally during chemotherapy, Mia has a hole in her heart. In the morning, the boys would find her stone cold and pale, a victim of her own inability to see her marriage, to pay attention to what her heart needed. So instead of going on, her heart was trying to quit. To jump ship. To bail out while there was time.
“What about my ears?” Mia says. “I can’t hear. It hurts.”
The nurse sighs and then picks up the ear scope, attaches the pointy tip, and then looks into Mia’s right ear.
“Oh. Well
,” the nurse says.
“What?”
“Looks like you do have an infection. Do you get these a lot?”
“No,” Mia says. “Never. It’s a year of firsts.”
The nurse takes the scope from her right ear and looks into the left. “Just the right ear. Well, it looks like antibiotics after all.”
Mia nods and watches the nurse write on the chart. How different this is, she thinks, than all the appointments with Sally. Look how slim her chart is. By the time she and Sally were in oncology, Sally’s chart looked like a tax code manual, thick and incomprehensible.
“Let me go get a script from the doctor. I’ll be right back. You can get dressed.”
The Instant When Everything is Perfect Page 27