The Instant When Everything is Perfect

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  The nurse leaves, and Mia slides off the table and takes off her gown. She shivers in the cool, exam room air and her skin prickles, gooseflesh everywhere. Mia is dressed and waiting when the nurse comes back in and hands her a prescription.

  “You’ll feel better soon,” the nurse says. “Make sure you take them all.”

  Mia nods and then walks out of the exam room, feeling her feet hit the same Inland floor that she walked so many times with her mother. Every time they left an exam room together, Mia felt heavy, weighted down with news and information and statistics. She can’t believe how much has changed. Sally is in Ireland, happy, traveling with a man. A boyfriend. A gentleman caller. Her postcard to Mia was almost exuberant: It’s beautiful here! Dick and I are loving it. Everything is green—the hills go on forever. I might just stay.

  Mia has an image of her mother whirling around on hills, sort of a Sound of Music move, but more subdued. More Sally.

  Clutching a piece of paper that will lead her towards health, Mia can almost smile, and she pushes out into the waiting room, feeling lighter—as if she isn’t clogged with cold—and there is Robert, sitting on a chair, looking at her.

  Mia stops moving but her body seems to rush forward, and she almost staggers, trying to find her balance. Robert puts down a magazine and stands up, walking to her, grabbing her arm.

  “Are you okay?” He looks at her, and the color of his eyes and the closeness of his face make Mia want to weep. If she were someone else or if she were in a movie, she’d wail and fall to the floor of the waiting room, disregarding all the sick people and her new cotton slacks.

  But she’s who she is, and even as she is looking at Robert, she knows she’s angry. Her head pulses, her ear throbs.

  “Yeah. Ear infection.”

  “No wonder you’re wobbly.” He smiles, and Mia looks away.

  “I’ve got to go to the pharmacy,” she says, showing him the prescription as if she has to prove it.

  “Let me take you,” he says, as if the health center is his home and he’s giving her another tour, just like that first time at his house.

  They start to walk and then Mia stops. “How did you know I was here?”

  Robert blushes and pushes his hair away from his forehead. She watches him smooth his hair, and she wants to touch his head, feel the soft strands under her fingers. But then she wants to yank hard on his ponytail and storm off.

  “Well,” he begins, his face completely red. “I happened—Look. I went into your file on the computer. I saw this appointment.”

  Mia blinks. “You spied on me.”

  He nods. “Yeah.”

  “Why did you wait so long?” she asks, a flare of anger racing along her jaw. “Why didn’t you find me sooner?”

  “I was scared,” he says quietly.

  She turns to him, her jaw aching. “Who isn’t?”

  Robert nods, keeps his eyes down, but he touches her wrist quickly. At his touch, all the tiny hairs on her body rise, and she swallows back her embarrassing desire.

  They reach the bank of elevators, but neither of them presses a button. Instead, they walk away and stand by the back wall, leaning against it. Mia breathes through her mouth, knowing that she must look terrible. Maybe she does look better because of the weight she’s lost since Ford left, but her eyes and nose are red, her hair washed but not styled. In all the fantasies she’d concocted of how she’d act and what she’d look like when she saw Robert again, this was not one of them.

  “How was Honduras?” she asks finally, filling the space between them with sound.

  “Great. I’m going back next year.”

  She nods, watches two women at the elevator door talking, and then she sighs. “Robert.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  She nods and begins to cry. “What happened?”

  Robert starts to say something, but then he pushes off the wall and takes her hand, leading her to the stairwell. “Let’s go outside. Let me tell you there.”

  They walk down the three flights of stairs and step out into the late spring morning. Already, it feels like it’s ninety degrees, the concrete sending up waves of trapped sunlight. Robert leads them to a bench that surrounds a giant oak, and they sit, not facing each other, thigh to thigh.

  Mia wipes her eyes and breathes in. “Ford and I are separated. We’re divorcing.”

  Robert jolts and then softens, taking her hand. “Were you going to tell me that the day you came over?”

  She nods because she can’t talk.

  He brings her hand to his mouth and kisses her, his lips soft and warm. “I’m glad I didn’t know then.”

  She nods again, swallows.

  “I found out something in Honduras,” he says.

  “What?” she mumbles.

  “About your name. What it means.”

  “Oh, that,” she says.

  “It has meaning,” he says.

  She shrugs. “I always thought that my mother made a mistake. She named me mine when it always seemed I wasn’t hers at all. But I think I’m hers after all.”

  “No,” Robert says, kissing her hand, turning her palm to his mouth. “You’re not hers. She named you for me. You’re mine.”

  For a moment, the air seems to cool and still around them. For a tiny second, her nose and head seem to clear, and Mia believes she will die now because she can’t breathe or hear or speak. Her heart will finally stop, too full and too empty both at the same time. She will die at this moment, as if the gods will choose her instead of Sally. She will die at this moment because she is finally completely, perfectly happy. In this second of time, she’s found that piece she longed for every morning of her long marriage, and she can’t believe that she’s been allowed to touch it, here, right now. She wonders if it will suddenly disappear.

  But the seconds keep passing. Robert continues to kiss her hand and then wrist and then arm. Then he lifts her chin and kisses her lips, not worried, it seems, about her cold or anything. He isn’t running away or hiding or sitting still and letting her leave him.

  “I’ve started your new novel,” he whispers against her neck.

  “How do you like it?” she asks, kissing his forehead.

  He pulls her tight against him. Mia closes her eyes, listens to his body with her own, feeling all of him next to her, with her, not leaving her. And for the first time, she’s with him, in the open, under a tree in the middle of a public place, loving the man she loves.

  “So far, it’s been a very intense read,” Robert says, his lips by her good ear. “A little scary. I had to put it down for a while. But now, I know I love it. I don’t ever want it to end.”

  Conversation Guide THE INSTANT WHEN EVERYTHING IS PERFECT

  Interview:

  Q: Many of your previous novels were inspired by specific events in your life. (Give two examples?) Is that true for this novel as well?

  A. Most writers do follow the old adage, “Write what you know.”

  But actually, most of my novels have been inspired by either something I’ve read or something a friend has gone through—or experiences that many people I know seem to be having. For instance, both One Small Thing and Walking With Her Daughter deal with infertility issues. As I’ve rounded into my forties, many of my friends have gone through infertility treatments, and being so close to so many who have, reality seeped into my stories.

  On the other hand, Her Daughter’s Eyes and When You Go Away were inspired by small newspaper articles I ripped out of the paper because the stories—one about a teenaged girl who hid her pregnancy and the other about a mother who neglected her special needs child—horrified and intrigued and interested me. Later, I realized I had to try to get to the bottom of the story in order to understand it. And the only way to get to the bottom was to write about it.

  Yet all of my stories have snippets of my real life in them—teaching, for one shows up in this novel and in Walking With Her Daughter. I have two full careers, and my other life can
’t help but influence my writing.

  What is true in this novel is cancer—my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, and one of the ways that I dealt with the situation is by writing about it. She is absolutely fine, by the way, Sally’s prognosis and hers quite the same.

  And as I lost my father to cancer when I was fifteen, I do seem to want to explore and discuss the impact of losing a parent—either as an adult or as a child. Her Daughter’s Eyes really deals with the loss that children feel. But loss and how we come to grips with loss fascinates me, probably because I haven’t really figured it out as a human being.

  Q: Like Mia, you’re a novelist and teacher who lives in northern California with two sons and a husband. Of all your female characters, is Mia the one who comes closest to being you?

  A: She has both of my jobs, that is certain, but I don’t think Mia and I are alike in terms of temperament. She is slower-paced, willing to hang out in the uncertainty a bit longer than I would have. I would have gotten on the phone and demanded that Robert tell me what was happening. I would have said something to Ford earlier. When Harper starts asking strange questions, I would have jumped all over them. I am sure I would have gotten on the phone a few times to my sisters to demand that they help out more with Sally. I think I’m much more impatient, so it was very interesting to hang out in Mia’s head and let her watch what was going on. She tended to respond rather than react, and I think I often react and then wish I’d waited and truly responded.

  My friends who have read all my novels seem to think that Jenna in Walking With Her Daughter is the character who is most like me.

  Q: Through Sally, you explore the blossoming of love that comes later in life, something that we rarely see in fiction. Why was it important to you to include this aspect of the story?

  A: Sally had a great deal of unfinished business, unresolved grief from the death of her husband years ago. So I’m not sure if it’s that I wanted to explore late-in-life love or that I wanted her to be able to finish her grief, to move into another stage, to find a way to keep growing. Also, I thought that the parallel between Sally falling in love and Mia falling in love was important, as both of them had to come to begin to understand their fears and worries about moving on.

  And I am compelled to believe that life doesn’t stop because we hit a certain age. We continue to love and live if we allow ourselves to.

  Q: Adultery is a tough subject to handle in fiction, partly because it’s challenging to keep the characters involved sympathetic. Why were you drawn to this subject and what choices did you consider as the novel took shape?

  A: Why wouldn’t we be sympathetic to them? Why wouldn’t we care about people trying to find what they want? Why wouldn’t we care about people who are searching? To look at things that way takes a very rigid moral code, one I’m not comfortable agreeing to. Yes, adultery does seem selfish at times, and it can seem like the biggest betrayal of all. Yet the truth is that adultery is a symptom of something very wrong in a relationship, and what it can do is signal that help is needed. No one has an affair if a relationship is full and growing, if the two people in it are committed to each other and to nurturing the relationship. So if one person or both turns to someone else, that’s a pretty clear sign that things need attention.

  I also feel that marriages can be developmental. For instance, Mia and Ford certainly developed in their relationship. They grew up, had children, cemented their careers, worked together to create a life for their boys. But I think that their relationship had fulfilled what it needed to: they helped each other and brought up two wonderful children. Their affairs show that they had stopped needing each other to grow. They were hanging onto the skeleton of their old relationship to avoid hurting each other.

  Many people can turn back toward each other after affairs and heal the problems in their relationships—and some can’t. Some don’t want to. Some know they need to move on to continue to grow as people. What happens at the crossroads is interesting to me as a person and a writer, and I wanted to explore this juncture.

  Q: Why did you choose to tell the story from three different points of view—that of Mia, Sally, and Robert?

  A: The first scene in the exam room created the point-of-view scenario for me. I realized that I was equally interested in all three people and wanted to follow them through the whole story. So I just kept going, following each through the story that was connected from the first lines of the novel.

  Q: Last year, you took a sabbatical from your teaching position. Was that time off a period of great creativity, or did it involve lots of afternoon naps?

  A: I wrote a couple of novels, worked out a lot, taught for UCLA, wrote a textbook, and gardened. Like Mia, I was rejuvenated by my sabbatical and needed very few naps!

  Q: What is keeping you busy and creative these days?

  A: Life keeps me pretty busy. I have just finished writing a novel draft and completed the revisions for a novel that will come out in 2006 from another publisher. I’ve actually been writing more poetry these days, which has been wonderful.

  Q: You meet many of your readers via reading groups, email, and bookstore appearances. What is the most surprising response you’ve received? The most touching?

  Probably the most touching thing that happened just happened recently. I dedicated Walking With Her Daughter to Karri Casner, one of seven Americans who died in the terrorist attack in Bali on October 12, 2002 (as my character Sofie does). I learned about Karri through my research of the attack on the nightclub in Kuta as I was writing my novel. When I finished the novel, I realized that there was no one else I wanted to dedicate the book to but her. Her youth and vivacity really influenced much of what I wrote about Sofie.

  One of the most popular questions when I went out on book tour was if I had told her parents that I had dedicated the book to her. I said no. I wasn't sure how to broach the topic with them, not knowing how they were on their trajectory of grief. I wasn’t sure if they would understand. I just thought hopeful thoughts for them.

  Somehow, they managed to find out about the novel and wrote to me. Here is what Susan Casner wrote:

  I want to thank you for dedicating your book to our daughter, Karri. I'm sure after reading the many articles about Karri in magazines and on the internet, you were able to get a sense of what a special young woman she was. Karri was an old soul--much wiser than her years. She visits us often . . . but that's another story!!

  I felt a great deal of gratitude for their generous response, and I also admired so much how they seemed to be healing and growing from this horrible experience.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Mia is different from her sisters in both appearance and profession. She’s big-boned and fleshy while they’re tall and slender; she’s artistic while they’re scientific. These differences have sometimes made her feel estranged from her family. Have you, or someone close to you, ever struggled with similar feelings of being disconnected to your family?

  Does Mia and Ford’s 22-year-old marriage remind you of other marriages you have known? Do you think it’s an accurate depiction of many long-time marriages? Comment on Mia’s realization that after she and Ford achieved the dreams of their early years, they “forgot to think up later dreams, other goals, future plans.” (Page ___)

  Mia was never sexually fulfilled in her marriage, yet she accepted that loss, and learned to live with it, because Ford brought many other positive qualities to the marriage--excellent parenting, for example. Do you know of other women who have made the same or similar compromises? In your opinion, are those trade-offs acceptable, or not?

  Robert has been involved with many women, but has not been able to make a commitment to any of them. Do you think that will change with Mia? Why or why not?

  Sally chooses not to have reconstructive surgery and she stops her chemotherapy treatments, preferring to live more fully right now despite the slightly increased chance that her breast cancer will reoccur. In her situat
ion, would you make the same choice? Drawing upon the experiences of women you’ve known, discuss the many choices open to women who are fighting breast cancer. Do you think some choices are more socially accepted than others?

  After Robert lost two patients on the operating table, he decided to focus his work on “serious” reconstructive plastic surgery rather than on cosmetic surgery. Do you find him more admirable because of his choice? How does his work in Honduras change your impression of him? Share your thoughts and opinions about the popularity of cosmetic surgery today. Does changing how people look really change who they are inside?