He sat back and squinted out the window like he was trying to get something into focus without putting on his glasses. He looked back at me and smiled.
“Ditto,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “We should send the rescue guys gift certificates for meals.”
“We did.”
∞
I didn’t get to go home the next day, or the next. My finger wasn’t healing as quickly as they hoped. Jon brought food and babies. Our parents went home and he was more relaxed with Kaia’s cousin there during the day and having his lanai back.
Jane came by. I was in coasting mode. Jimmy did his needles. He worked on me twice a day and we continued our obscure conversations about the elastic energy field, which I had started visualizing as a bullfrog throat sack. I was stuck in the hospital with a vivid imagination and no baby bullfrog.
I proposed the idea that a mating frog’s throat sack was a microcosm of life expanding from the elastic field. Now you don’t see it, now you do. Mating is the beginning, or I guess it is. You have to draw the starting line somewhere. Patterns repeat. Outer space through a telescope looks like inner space under an electron microscope. We keep telling ourselves it’s different, it isn’t, but unless we tell ourselves that, we couldn’t find our way to the grocery store, or Walmart.
No one rushed in to record my musings like I was Stephen Hawking. I didn’t solve any sudoku puzzles. Though I decided he needed to just guess sometimes when he was stuck on a problem. I also decided it was obvious that the universe expands, and then contracts, like a bullfrog throat sack. We were getting all wound up over frog bellows. We thought we were on the ride out, if so, somewhere down the line there would be a ride in. Then another deep breath and kablooey, right back out again. Ribit. I had too much time to tumble thoughts. The needles were percolating and Jimmy was working his puzzle when I started laughing.
He looked at me and smiled.
“I was just thinking about the spark I felt with the babies. Is that what they mean by the big bang theory?”
He was quiet. I was still laughing even though it made my nose hurt like hell. Goddess help me, I was getting goofy.
“You know,” I said, “as opposed to the little bang theory, when you’re just banging?”
“Banging?”
“That’s right, Dr. Bangers and Mash, you call it sodding. Anyway, that’s what it is, a big bang. Creation. The universe beginning again. Jon said it is the universe after all. You know, like uni-verse, unified, all one verse, a single story. I have a friend who reads scripts for the studios; she says there is only one story. I need to ask her what it is. I guess it’s like the ocean in a single drop. You know what I mean?”
“I think I do.”
“Jon left the playing field at string theory, but he keeps up some. He read an article by a physicist at Harvard while I was taking a nap. She thinks she got a ping from out there. Might be tiny evidence of the ninety-eight percent of what is, that we have no way of seeing with our carbon based eyeballs.”
“She called them carbon based eyeballs?”
“No. I just made that up. Jon’s a mathematician. He likes binoculars, counting, measuring. I’m going to buy him a telescope. It always boils down to our ears and eyeballs and what our minds can make of it. Pretty limited when you think about it. I have a kaleidoscope. I don’t know what that says about me. I’m fragmented? I like my own interpretation? Jon would probably agree with that. Who doesn’t?”
He stood up and wiggled a few of the needles.
“Be now here,” he said.
Not a chance. I lay there thinking about eyeball interpretations. When my first husband looked at the world through his eyeballs, all he saw was no. After our first year, I started thinking of him as Mister No. I never told him that because if there’s one thing Mister Nos know, it’s that their concept of reality is the reality. His outer mantra was: It Can’t Be Done. His inner mantra was: I Don’t Think I Can. Life in concrete boots.
When Jon looked out, he thought yes. Or at least maybe. Knowing that fundamental concept of reality in a person can save you a world of grief. Even more than meeting their parents first. I’d have to remember to tell Meggie and Chance to run, not walk, from the Nos of the world. Good thing I stayed alive. A month ago I wouldn’t have known to put that in their letter. I looked over at Jimmy working his puzzle.
“My mind has been taken hostage by morphine,” I said.
He smiled and nodded at his puzzle. I went back to staring at the ceiling.
∞
Jane came later and I laid out my thoughts on no versus maybe. How Jon’s mother cooked by the book, while my mother cooked scattershot. It was clearly a metaphor for our childhoods. Jon’s mother smothered them with responsible attention. My mother’s attention was unpredictable. She could leave you at the church one week and get all parenty over vision boards the next. Jane thought it had less to do with cooking and more to do with trying to control outcomes. I told her God is just karma in a toga. She told me I might need drug rehab when I was released. I was still going to warn the kids about the No People.
∞
Slow healing. After two weeks, they moved me into the on-site rehab facility, where I lived for another three weeks. Jon brought the kids every day and we Skyped with family and friends. Meggie rode her trike in slow circles around the racetrack hall and became a sunny visitor for the other inmates.
It was weeks before I could French braid her hair with just the pincher. Stray hairs kept getting hung up on the gauze bandage. Jane came every few days, but it seemed my head was put together okay, or she was tired of knocking on it. Could be I was getting ready for therapy again. I’d weaned off painkillers without needing Narcotics Anonymous.
Despite my vow to remember it all, with my family around, regular clothes, a punk pixie haircut, and walks in the sun, thoughts about the bullfrog sack wandered off and I slowly reattached to my life. I had a pile of things from home that Jon and Meggie had brought. She was big on shells and feathers, and my kaleidoscope. Jon brought music, books on watercolor, and the unopened lip-gloss he found when cleaning out the car.
“I bought it that night. I figured I’d be dating soon.”
“You’re not going to be dating while I’m still alive. Penny gave it her best shot, but the thongs were too moldy to save.”
“Oh brother. Those were another dating thing.”
“You didn’t wear thongs when we dated.”
“I don’t remember much dating. My bikini bottoms were small.”
“Not that small. I wouldn’t have introduced my daughter to someone who ran around with a bare ass.”
Jon was feeding Chance a new formula. He’d only spent a few days shaking his head in violent protest before he was weaned off sugar milk. Meggie’s Nutella addiction had been harder to crack. I smiled at Chance. He spit out the nipple, beamed his gums at me and kicked his legs.
“We can’t have more children,” I said.
“We were always going to reach a point where we couldn’t have more. We just drew the line for ourselves. I still think it was a good decision.”
“I do too. It’s just that now, if anything happens to them, we can’t have more.”
“They can’t be replaced. We’ll do our best to keep them safe.”
“Karin thought we should name the baby Chimp Moon,” I said.
“A good reason to stop at two,” he said. “I don’t miss the monkey.”
∞
Detectives Kawasaki and McClure came by the day before I was discharged. They had been keeping an eye on the guys, determined to nail them for something. So far all they had was more of the same aimless bullshit. The scar face guy was shacked up, McClure’s words, with a clueless young haole runaway from the mainland who worked at a convenience store. Most mornings she stopped at work, grabbed him a couple of Hurricanes on the house, then drove him to the lowlife beach in her rusted out Toyota truck, with the ‘ota’ painted out and drivers side door
tied shut. They ignored her theft. They figured she had enough problems if she was dumb enough to get tangled up with him.
ELEVEN
Jon left the kids at home on the day he came to spring me. The drive home was like traveling in a foreign country. Everything went by too fast. It must have been strange for him too. We were together and on our own.
He turned into our driveway. The ramp was still there for Meggie’s trike track. It ran up to the kitchen door where I had last seen him in my rearview mirror.
Jimmy said I could float in a calm swell. My finger was messy looking but healed. I felt nervous about
Jon and my hands, making love, if we would. We hadn’t talked about it in weeks. Kaia’s cousin, Meli, a spectacular young version of Kaia, came out to greet us carrying Chance on her hip with a casual grace. I had a fleeting thought that she was the reason we hadn’t talked about making love in over a month. I looked at Jon to see if he was looking at her with misgiving, or longing. He was watching my feet to make sure I didn’t stumble.
He’d made me a daybed piled with pillows and light blankets on the lanai where I could be close to the family. He was going to get Meggie at school later, but he took me in the water first.
Even with physical therapy, half my muscle strength was gone. My bathing suit had gaps where my body had been. Jon backed in to shield me from the tiny breakers, smiling the way he did when he lured Meggie in to paddle. For the first time in my life, I felt unsure in the water.
“I’m scared,” I said.
“We can go back.”
“No, we can’t.”
We got out past the breakers and floated on our backs, holding hands to stay together like otters.
We used the new outdoor shower that Arthur and Tom had engineered when the ramp was done and they needed a project. I had soaked in the sea and washed with my favorite soap. I didn’t smell like a hospital. I washed Jon’s back. It was the first time in over a month that I’d had my hands on him. His back muscles and ass. He’d lost weight. His tan line was fuzzy from his trunks riding loose on his hips. I put my arms around his waist and started to slide them down his belly. He wrapped his arms over mine and stopped me. We let the water run over us, then helped each other dry off.
I settled in my nest and fell asleep.
∞
My eyes opened to the sun low in the sky. Meggie was sitting at the kitchen counter eating while Jon fixed dinner. I listened to them talking and thought of him doing the same thing with Chana when she was that age. I wondered what it was like for him to be doing it again. If he’d thought that was all behind him and he’d be on to living a life free of children, maybe lying in the snow in Alaska watching the sky dance. It’s so hard to know what people are thinking, even the ones close to you.
“Done!” said Meggie.
Jon said something to her. The stool scraped and her feet headed my way. She peeked around the corner. I waved. She was very careful climbing up on the bed.
I slid down on my side and we lay looking at each other. I brushed hair behind her ears and kissed the end of her nose. She smelled like schoolhouse.
She told me about her day. One of the teachers had played a ukulele, a word that required more patience to pronounce than her mouth possessed. Chop showed up and called for her to come out, but she threw him over for me. Jon brought Chance out and he broke into a smile, kicked his feet and made that small all in breath sound we make when we’re just learning to laugh.
Jon got them in bed, and I met him at the kitchen table for a dinner of Victor’s most excellent lamb. I had a glass of wine because I wasn’t nursing, or pregnant, or full of morphine. I felt human.
The house was quiet as we got into bed. Chance snuffled in his basket. Meggie had been spending more nights in her own bed. Maybe waking up to Mom’s toilet paper wrapped head had done the trick. Jon said she showed up in the morning when she realized she’d been in there all alone and needed reassurance.
His kiss was so gentle it took my breath away. We spent more time exploring each other’s lips and tongues and mouths, eyes and ears, than we’d spent most nights doing the whole big banging thing, several times over. We had no destination. I put my mouth to his ear.
“We can figure something out,” I said. “I still have a few things that work.”
His voice rumbled in my ear. “This is something.”
He got on his elbows over me and slid his fingers between mine. He watched what he was doing so he didn’t upset my mangled finger. I felt self-conscious and started to pull away but he squeezed his fingers so I couldn’t slip them out, and then wrapped them closed.
“I think we should date,” he said. “Then if you say yes, I’ll buy you a ring and we’ll get married.”
“With our horse out of the barn children as attendants?”
“Yep.”
“I think redoing vows is dumb,” I said.
“Me too. I’m just trying to wrangle a ring on you.”
“Is it that important to you?”
“Yep. I want other men to know you’re taken.”
“You’re so stubborn.”
“You knew that before you married me the first time.”
“Maybe you could change for the second marriage. What would you like me to change?”
He smiled at the sound of a trap.
We went back to making out. Hmmm. His hand drifted toward my breasts and he growled a promise that he wouldn’t try for more. I’m easy. I never dated in high school, so I never racked up experience fending off boys promising to put it in just a little. I couldn’t believe anyone fell for that one.
Jon did stop. I tried to get him to go on, but he put his face in my neck.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“You’re not hurting me.”
He wrapped his arm around me and I buried my face in his neck.
“I can’t believe I let you do that on our first date,” I said.
“It’s going to be okay.”
∞
The first thing I noticed about morning at home was the breeze coming through the bedroom window drifting ocean mist across my back with a flat feathery brush. I cracked my eyes to Jon’s sleeping face only a few inches away. Meggie’s fingers were draped over his neck, pulsing on his jugular vein. She’d wedged herself between Jon’s back and Chance’s basket, message delivered.
I slid out of bed and walked out to the beach with Chop trailing behind. Just the little bit of floating and little bit of Jon had left me sore. I’d only been sitting for a few minutes before Chop squealed a greeting that oinked-oinked, oinked-oinked, oinked-oinked with his bouncing trot back toward Jon and Meggie who were walking my way. Meggie was barefoot in a new cotton nightie with bows on the shoulders. Jon sat down with Chance’s basket and smiled while he watched Meggie hop in the water with Chop. He never took his eyes off her around the water. His Penny part lived in fear of the rogue wave.
We had breakfast and then he dropped Meggie at school on the way to work. Meli came over every time Chance woke up so I could walk and sleep.
∞
Jane called in the afternoon. I told her how great it was to be home, to go in the water, to make out.
“Any problem with that?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Were you there?”
“Yes. I was fine, but Jon didn’t want more. He said he didn’t want to hurt me.”
“Hm.”
“Is that the Mona Lisa over the phone?”
“The Mona Lisa?”
“The enigmatic hm. Do they teach that in school?”
“They teach leaving you room to grow.”
“I wasn’t worried. Russ said we should be fine as long as we take it easy.”
She waited in the enigmatic silence.
“My finger is mangled. I’m almost bald. My body looks awful, it’s like I’m partly fat and partly wasted away. I’m not attractive anymore.”
“Did Jon say that?”
“He didn’t seem to notice.”
“It sounds like he didn’t.”
“How could he not notice? I’m a mess. He held my mangled finger like he always did.”
“How did you feel? Physically?”
“Not like I used to. Patricia said there might be some nerve damage, but we just made out. That part was the nicest it’s ever been. There was no goal.”
“Do you think it’s possible Jon felt the same way?”
“It’s possible, but he’s never been the hold back type in bed.”
“How was it when you first met?”
“He took charge the first night. He has never turned away from me. He wants to start over, to date. We didn’t really date. It was just so natural, like we were meant for each other. Except for a little flurry, there was no struggle. We were just together.”
“Has that changed?”
“Going over a cliff is a lot, Jane. We lost a baby because of some guys out of left field. His ex-wife is talking crazy. So, yeah, a lot has changed.”
“Now you’re struggling?”
“I liked that we never struggled. It’s not natural anymore.”
“Struggle is natural,” she said.
“It feels messy. I thought we had fallen in love, gotten married and started a family. I knew he had an ex-wife, but she was never part of the conversation. And now I’m damaged.”
“Damaged is a strong word.”
“What else would you call a mangled finger and pelvic nerve damage? He’s faced with a lifetime with me like this. What if I never get it back?”
“It would be sad for both of you,” she said. “It’s early to assume you have nerve damage. It’s common for people who go through something like you did to lose interest in sex for a while. You almost died. Alone. You had an experience not shared by the people around you.”
Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 02 - Spring Moon Page 20