Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

by Ayelet Waldman

  “Yup. I'll see you at the thing, okay?”

  “Yes. Um, honey?”

  “I really have to go.”

  “Okay. I love you, sweetheart.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.”

  I hand over the phone. Poor Jack. I toss his son into the Harlem Meer and get into a fight with his ex-wife, but it is he who must stand in his stocking feet with her voice boring a hole in his eardrum. I am impressed with the job he does defending me, although it is true that I've given him all the ammunition; he simply uses the phrases I coined when defending myself against his opprobrium.

  “It was an accident.”

  “They tripped and fell.”

  “It's only a little water and mud.”

  I feel especially gratified when he tells her that she is overreacting. Jack improves on me significantly by telling Carolyn that he fears she has become hydrophobic. That's a very good word. I wait for him to suggest aversion therapy or flooding—I'm ready to volunteer to dump the woman into the Meer myself—but he is not so sarcastic as that. Alas, by the end of the conversation, he is apologizing. And then he says, “Well, thank you. Thank you for that. I do appreciate it.”

  “Thank you?” I say, horrified. “For what? Thank you for what?”

  He waves his hand, silencing me. A moment later he hangs up the phone.

  “What the hell were you thanking her for?”

  “She said she hadn't intended to say anything about the incident. She was apparently just going to let it go, but when William got so upset, she didn't feel like she had a choice.”

  “The incident.” I laugh bitterly. “You thanked her for changing her mind and yelling at you after all?”

  “I thanked her for being willing to let it go. I'm just managing her, Emilia. Don't you see that? Don't you understand that that's what I have to do? I have to manage her. Jesus, you'd think you of all people would understand that.”

  “Why? Because you have to manage me, too?”

  “I didn't say that.”

  “But that's what you meant.”

  “Can we just stop this, Emilia?” He yanks off his jacket and throws it on the little armchair. His tie quickly follows. He unbuttons the top button of his shirt and sits down heavily on the bed next to me. He rubs his hands roughly across his face. “I'm just so tired of all this.”

  I grab his hand and hold it in both of mine. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't believe I even said that. This whole thing is totally my fault.” I kiss his palm. “I'm sorry Jack.”

  “I know.”

  I pull his palm to my cheek and rest my face on it. It's smooth against my skin. “Do you think William can still come with us to the walk?” I say.

  “What?”

  “You know, the Walk to Remember. What my mom was just calling about. It's next Sunday afternoon. The 29th. Leap day. Or whatever you call it. The last day of February.”

  Jack lets his hand stay against my face but he does not cup my cheek like I want him to. “Do you still want him to come?” he says.

  “I need him to come.” And I do. I need all of us to be there together, even William, especially William, so that I can show him that I am trying to put things back together, to become the kind of stepmother who doesn't drop you into icy water. The kind whom you can trust to change your soiled pants. If William joins us on the walk through the park, I can begin the reconstruction of my life and our family.

  I tell this to Jack and though he seems unconvinced, he says, “He'll be there.”

  “But Carolyn said I couldn't take him to the park anymore.”

  “It's not Carolyn's decision.”

  Chapter 25

  In the late afternoon of Sunday, February 29th, Jack, William, and I make our way downtown in the direction of Strawberry Fields and the black-and-white, circular Imagine mosaic where the Walk to Remember will begin. Ever conscientious and rule abiding, I made sure to register online, even though doing so required me to fill in a blank for the name and birthday of my “precious baby.” I paid the $20 fee, the very top of the sliding scale, but declined to order a commemorative Walk to Remember T-shirt or sweatshirt from RTS Bereavement Services.

  I have no idea how many people to expect at this event. As we walk down Central Park West toward Seventy-second Street, I keep eyeing the passersby, on the lookout for others who might be headed to the walk. A melancholy woman pushing her sadness in front of her like an empty stroller seems certain to be one of us, but when she drags herself up the front steps under the marquee of the elegant Langham, into the warm glow of the lobby, I remind myself that there are reasons for dejection besides my own. We follow two blond women in ski parkas into the park. Despite their vocal cheer and their very tall cups of coffee, they are walkers and rememberers.

  “This is your gate, Emilia,” William says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It's Women's Gate. That's the name. West Seventy-second Street is the Women's Gate.”

  I cannot enjoy William's chatter about the park. I appreciate the fact that he has learned so much about this place that I love, but I am far too anxious this afternoon to participate in his pleasure.

  Strawberry Fields is overrun with dead-baby people. There are far too many to fit comfortably in the area of the mosaic; they spill out over the pathways onto the area behind the benches that in summer is a grassy meadow and now, in winter, is nothing but a bank of hard-packed earth. Some are even gathering as far away as the gnarled and naked wisteria arbors. In the center of the mosaic stands a woman with a clipboard, checking people in. A long line snakes around her and the two women scrambling through a large cardboard box at her feet.

  “I'll go sign in,” I say to Jack.

  By the time I have worked my way to the front of the line I am regretting my decision to come this afternoon. It is cold and uncomfortable here in Strawberry Fields. People are smiling too kindly at one another, and there are women wearing oversized Walk to Remember T-shirts on top of their coats. They are circulating through the crowd waving boxes of tissue. Most people are wearing large white stars pinned to their coats. The stars have names printed on them, and I wonder if I'm the only one who thinks they are uncomfortably reminiscent of the yellow stars of Nazi Germany. While we wait in line I read the names on the stars pinned to the coats of the people around me. “Jacob 12/16/03,” “Tallulah Lee 3/3/01.” Some women have more than one name printed on their stars, and I wonder what bad luck has poisoned their lives. I am startled by a woman wearing a hot-pink coat and turquoise Ugg boots, whose star has three names on it. I peer at it more closely. Two of the names are only three months apart and the third is six months later. I realize, with a vertigo that almost knocks me off my feet, that this woman has named her miscarriages. Henry Marcus, Jackson Felipe, and Lucy Julianne. How, I wonder, did she determine their gender? Surely in at least one case it was too early for ultrasound to detect a sex.

  I know it is unfair to feel disgust for this pink-clad, perky blonde. After all, at the very least she has had a terrible time maintaining a pregnancy. I know how much grief there is in that. I've seen how wretched it has made Mindy to lose one pregnancy after another. This woman looks like she would be a perfect mother, a mother who would insist on moving to Westchester or New Jersey so that her children would not have to ride their bikes in small circles in front of the doorman, a mother who would be an active participant on UrbanBaby.com, sharing her goodwill and knowledge, a mother who would pack attractive and well-balanced lunches complete with a cold pack to keep the turkey breast fresh, a mother who would use a melon baller so that her children would eat papaya and cantaloupe for breakfast. I have no right to condemn her just because she has given her miscarriages middle names.

  I have a sudden, sickening thought. Has Mindy named her miscarriages, too? I hope not. I hope she is one of the women with a list of dates on her star and nothing else. That is bad enough.

  “What's your angel's name?”

  “Excuse me?” I say.r />
  “Your little star? Your baby?” The woman with the clipboard is making a sad-clown face with her head cocked to one side and her eyebrows bunched together. It is disturbingly like the one Simon sometimes makes. Still, her voice is very nice. Melodic. Soothing.

  “Isabel. Isabel Woolf.”

  She flips to a back page and makes a check mark. Then she points to the women with the box. “They have your stars. There's one to wear, and one made out of cellulose to float in the pond at the end of the walk.”

  I am about to get my star when I notice the one pinned on her heavy pea coat. It has only one name. William 7/19/98.

  “Oh,” I say.

  Her hand flutters to her star. “I've been doing these walks for a long time,” she says.

  “No, it's not that. It's just . . . that's my stepson's name.”

  She smiles. “It's a nice name.”

  “It is.”

  She strokes the star, like it is her child's soft, downy hair. “It was my grandfather's name. Billy was named after him. We called him Billy, though. William seems like such a grown-up name for a little boy.”

  “How did . . . never mind, that's none of my business.”

  “No, no. It's fine to ask. People here like to talk about their babies. For most of us it's the only time we get to talk about them. SIDS. Billy died of SIDS.”

  “Isabel, too. That's how Isabel died.”

  She leans closer to me, bends her head so that our murmuring cannot be overheard. “It's a terrible way to lose them. However it happens is bad, but SIDS is the worst. I mean, of course I'd think that, but I know I'm right. It's the mystery of it. Never knowing why it happened.”

  I back away from her secretive and seductive confidence. In a normal, conversational tone, I ask, “Do you have other kids?”

  I can tell that she is hurt by my refusal to accept her intimacy. Still she says, “Of course. Billy was our second, and we've had two more since he passed away. I've got four. Four with Billy. Three living. And now I'd better finish with this line. We're going to start the walk soon. Don't forget to take a candle for every member of your party.”

  I hold the cardboard star with Isabel's name and date of birth. Her name looks so odd without the surname. Just Isabel Greenleaf. As though Jack were not part of her life at all. When we gave her my last name as a middle name it never occurred to either of us that she would ever be known by just the first two parts of her name. I don't want to pin this star on my lapel.

  “Emilia,” Jack says, appearing at my elbow. “I found your mom and dad.”

  “My mom and dad?”

  There, standing in the gray afternoon light, holding William's hand tightly in his own, is my father, a proud, shy smile on his face. Look, his smile says. Look what a fine and understanding man I am. I have picked up my ex-wife and driven across the George Washington Bridge in order to show my grandfatherly support. My father is a mild-looking man, he looks like Clark Kent ought to have looked, had he really wanted to retain his anonymity. He is about five foot six, of middling weight, although after the divorce he acquired a paunch borne of restaurant meals and breakfasts of Krispy Kremes. His hair is gray, almost white, and floats over his freckled, pink scalp as if it is waiting for a heavy wind to blow it away once and for all. When he is running for president of the bar association, or when he is meeting a friend of one of his children for the first time, he gives the impression of joviality. He is prone to bursts of high spirits and optimism and to occasional deep black moods, flashes of inexplicable rage.

  “I'm so sorry we're late,” my mother said. “You wouldn't think there would be traffic going in this direction on a Sunday in the middle of winter. And then parking. You know your father, he'll never just put the car in a lot. We kept circling and circling. I was afraid we'd miss the whole thing.” She is talking rapidly, giving me time to overcome my surprise at seeing my father here, at seeing them together.

  “How did you know about the walk?” I ask him.

  “I told him,” William says, matter-of-factly. He is swinging my father's arm back and forth and over, like a jump rope. I used to do that when I was a little girl.

  “You told him?”

  My father says, “I called the other day, didn't William give you the message? You two were on your way to explore the pinetum.”

  I say, “We weren't going to the pinetum. You were the one who said we should go to the pinetum. We went to the Ramble. And to the Conservatory Garden.”

  “And to the Harlem Meer,” William says ominously. Then he laughs and slips under my father's arm, like a square dancer.

  My father tugs William back and spins him out a few times. They are the only people giggling and dancing at the Walk to Remember and I wish they would stop.

  “Young William told me about this event, and when I found out your mother was going, I thought to myself, Old Man Greenleaf, you should do this with your family. After all, how long has it been since you've seen the luminaires all lit up?”

  “That's what I said!” William crows. “I said I wanted to come because I wanted to see the luminaires!”

  “Aren't you going to put on your star, honey?” my mother asks.

  I look down at the cardboard star in my hand. I have been clutching it too tightly and one point is crumpled. I try to smooth it out, but the crease remains. I pin the star to my chest and the bent point sticks out at an angle.

  “I only have four candles,” I say.

  “I'll get another one,” Jack says. In a moment he returns and we busy ourselves adjusting the wax-paper cones to protect them from the wind.

  A few minutes later there is a rustle through the crowd, an expectant buzz. The woman with the clipboard, the mother of the William who slipped away in the middle of the night, like Isabel, calls out in her clear bell of a voice, “Welcome to this special leap year Walk to Remember. We're going to set out in a moment. We'll be walking east to Bethesda Fountain, and then cutting north. If you lose the group for any reason, you'll be able to find us at our final destination, the model boat pond, by the Hans Christian Andersen statue. I'd like to remind you that we try to observe silence on the walk, until the end when we'll have the traditional poetry reading and ceremony.”

  The crowd slowly unwinds, making its way along the path. My father holds William's hand, and the two of them occasionally whisper to each other. William's whisper is louder than a Shakespearian actor's. It is a stage whisper meant to be heard at the very back of the balcony. A hawk-nosed man in a well-tailored coat glances censoriously our way a few times. Finally, the man's wife puts her hand on his sleeve and together they quicken their pace, moving away from us and our bad behavior.

  “Shh,” I hiss at my father.

  “This child doesn't know who Daniel Webster was!” my father whispers. We are passing the tall bronze sculpture of the frowning orator. William imitates his pose, shoving his hand in the lapel of his jacket, and my father laughs. My father is a Daniel Webster fan. He collects the biographies of dead lawyers: Clarence Darrow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Nizer.

  “Sheldon,” my mother whispers to my father. “Shelly be quiet. You're bothering the other people.”

  Jack puts his arm around my shoulders and hugs me close, laying a soft kiss on my temple. He keeps me moving toward the Angel of the Waters.

  By now it is getting dark and the art nouveau luminaires are glowing orange. There is a scrim of ice on the long gentle flight of stairs leading down to Bethesda Terrace and the fountain and we step in the footprints of the walkers who have gone before us, treading carefully so as not to slip. I turn and look for my mother, who is walking behind us. She is wearing winter boots with thick rubber soles and steps more confidently than I.

  The walk has paused at the fountain, and people are circling the round pool, their flickering candles reflected in the water. The huge bronze statue rises in the middle, a winged woman held up by four cherubs, curly haired children like the ones we don't have. I stand between Jack and
my mother and wait to be moved, wait to be overcome by a transformative, epiphanous healing. I stamp my feet against the cold and my candle goes out.

  “Damn it,” I mutter.

  Jack bends his candle to mine and marries the wicks.

  I turn back to the fountain. Across the pool I see the helpers in T-shirts busy distributing their tissues. There are lots of tear-streaked faces. Even some audible sobbing. It takes me a minute to find my father and William. They are standing at the edge of the Lake, throwing rocks into the water. People have begun to drift away, to continue on the walk. I concentrate, desperate to feel something, quickly, before it is too late. This is the time for me to liberate myself from the guilt that lodges like a stone in my gullet. I try to picture Isabel's face, but it is just a baby face, soft and unformed, too much like other babies for me to focus on with any clarity. Instead I think of Emma Stebbins, who designed this sculpture, they say to honor her lover, the actress Charlotte Cushman, who was dying of breast cancer. I've even heard that that's why the angel has such a great rack, because Charlotte did, too, before she underwent the horrors of nineteenth-century mastectomy. But Charlotte Cushman's breasts and Emma Stebbins's overwrought sculpture are not what I am supposed to be contemplating right now.

  “Let's keep going,” Jack murmurs into my ear. Ever solicitous, he leads us on, my mother and me, a hand for each of us. As we cross the terrace and head north along the path I look back to see if my father and William are following. I can't find them anywhere.

  “Where are they?” I say.

  Jack looks over at the Lake and then up the terrace.

  “What is it?” my mother says. She is still whispering, even though by now the rest of the walkers have passed us and are on their way up the meandering path to the model boat pond.

  “Daddy!” I call. “Daddy! William!”

  “Stay right here,” Jack says. He takes off at a run up the terrace calling William's name. It does not take long. A few moments, only. They had not actually intended to hide and have not gone far. The two of them are in the Arcade, in the tunnel underneath the stairs leading to the terrace.