by Mira Ptacin
“What about Nicole?”
“What do you think about what she did?”
“She was a kooky girl, naïve, hard to deal with. But it was beautiful that she could do that. I’m not sure I could have done that.”
“Why do you think she chose to deliver?”She says that she doesn’t know. That maybe it was something Nicole wanted to do for herself. She also had lots of support from the nurses and delivery staff. Maybe it gave her some validity. Maybe that was the only way she could get attention from other people. And love.
The sky drops a shade darker, and about ten thousand birds bark and dart over our heads. Crows. Sparrows. Finches. Nuthatches. The flock whizzes over to the long, black silhouette of a pine tree forest, and from behind the trees, I hear the shrill cry of birds I am afraid of: blue jays. Those evil little bastards, probably out murdering their own kind.
“It smells familiar here,” Mom says and I study the scent.
“It smells like the first grade,” I say. A red-breasted robin, pecking at the roadside weeds beside us in a staccato fashion, stops her movement and looks up at us. Mom walks past the bird, unaware of its presence, but I look down at it. For a moment the robin seems to look at me in a secret way, connecting her dewy eyes with mine as if to say: you know me.
“When did you finally realize it, Mom?” I say abruptly, surprising myself.
“Realize what?”
“What had happened. Like, when did it finally become true to you that Julian was gone? That he had died?” After I ask, the question feels raw and rude, the way it does when you ask a grown woman her age, even though I know it isn’t.
“I lived in a dream,” she says. “Up until his funeral, I assumed I was only dreaming.”
Since the surprise pregnancy and its terrible, abrupt ending, everything in my world has felt like a hallucination or a dream. I have somehow put myself in a trance, and I want to realize that I’m not a bad person for not being able to bring myself into a sharper, pointier reality. Anytime I do start to feel something real, something instantly happens inside of me, like in my stomach or my brain, that makes me feel enormously tired and sleepy before I can realize what I’ve just begun to start feeling.
“Up until Julian’s funeral, I was on autopilot,” Mom says.
“What happened at the funeral that made you realize, or see the truth of the whole thing?” I ask.
“Two days after Julian died, we arrived at St. Philip Church for his funeral. Church was completely full. People spilled into streets and police blocked all the roads. I saw so many faces, so many people who came from all different walks of life, came just to say goodbye to this young boy they had never even met. And when I walk into the church,” she says, sounding far away, “and I walk down the red church carpet to the alter . . . this was when I realize, It is my last walk with my son. This is when it all became real for me.”
“Do you ever feel alone in your feelings?
“What kind of feelings, Mirunia?” she says.
“Like the kind of feelings you get when you’re pushed out onto a dance floor but the rhythm hasn’t hit your bones yet.”
She turns back and looks at me, confused.
“Like the suspicion that there is something wrong with you but no one else can see it,” I say.
“Mirunia,” she says, squeezing my hand. “It takes time.”
I look over my shoulder, checking to see if there are any strangers nearby who might overhear. A country cat is stretched out under a white birch tree. Next to her are ten or eleven squares of yellow hay and a big For Sale sign. It comes from the same family Dad used to buy barrels of hay from to cushion the trees at the bottom of our hill during winter sledding season.
“Mira, do you know how many couples in Battle Creek alone have lost children?”
“I’m not talking about the baby right now, Mom,” I say defensively.
“Why not? Then what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about segregation. Feeling completely isolated,” I say. “Even when you’re with your husband, your partner.”
Mom told me that while Andrew and I had been flying through the air from LaGuardia to Kalamazoo, Dad had been shaving his head. She said he wanted his hair to be just like Andrew’s because he thought Andrew’s buzz cut (really, Andrew) was the bee’s knees. Dad told us that he had a surprise waiting for us when we arrived in Michigan, and when we walked through the front door, I saw my father as I had never seen him before: nearly bald. Dad looked just like Andrew, and Andrew looked just like my father. They both smiled luminously at each other, like two rascals.
“Mira,” my mother says. “My darling, precious girl. Sometimes we presume things in our heads, and sometimes our presumption is totally different from what is more true.” I feel myself stiffening as she continues.
“For instance, after Jules died, it felt like Daddy was a man becoming a child. A child who needed to be hugged and held and embraced.”
I let go of her hand. “What are you talking about?”
“Let me ask you this,” she says. “Do you know how men cope?”
“Sex.”
“Sex. Sometimes, sex would help Daddy to cope.”
“Ew, Mom. Come on.”
“Oh, no Mira, you come on. We get married and we make love. No bigger intimacy than making love,” she says, and I can feel myself tightening.
“Fine,” I sigh. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
“With sex, men feel close, emotionally. After Julian die, and Daddy wanted it, I thought, How could he do that? As a woman, I could not make love.”
“Mom . . .”
“Oh Mira,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I am afraid you know exactly zero about marriage and men, and this worries me. Mirunia, just listen to me. Andrew is not a woman.”
“No shit,” I mutter.
“He is man and he will respond differently. Dat is interesting about women and men and sex and grief; we all respond differently. When we naked, our insecurities are exposed. And for men, making love to a woman they love is like having a blanket of security. Dis is how men cope.”
“But what if I don’t want to have sex?” I argue. I am beginning to sense that I have been exhausting myself by trying to cover my tracks, trying to right my “wrongs” just sitting with what has just happened. I have been busying myself, trying to comfort Andrew, to comfort anyone, so they would feel better. Why have I been doing this? “Maybe I’m not ready.” I’ve been boosting everyone else forward, and I don’t even know what I want. “Maybe I don’t want to be naked and exposed.”
The road bends and we turn onto our street.
“Mira,” she says. “I know you feel most vulnerable this way, too.”
“No. Actually, I do not,” I say, feeling both embarrassed and angry at the same time.
“Maybe you are afraid of getting pregnant,” she says. “You are afraid because you believe there is something wrong with you,” she says. “You will feel better when you have another baby. You can prepare yourself for project number two.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“Losing a baby is very traumatic, but you will sanctify your body again. Subconsciously will feel better about your body, connect body with soul.”
“Mom, please.”
“You are just afraid, Mirunia. And there is nothing wrong with dat,” she says. “You just need to let yourself be love.”
We reach East Sylvan Drive, our street, and head up the hill to our home on the dead end. I look to the right, past the Ferraris’ house and down the hill. Through the poplar trees, I can see a flock of geese landing on the glassy surface of the lake. Their little rubber feet skim the water and it looks as if they’re water-skiing, which, in fact, they are. About thirteen summers ago, Dad taught us all how to water-ski, all except for Mom, who refused to try it. “You are not going t
o make me do something I do not want to do, Phil,” she had scolded, so my mother became the spotter on the back of the boat, keeping an eye out in case any of her children were to take a dive. To be honest, I hated waterskiing too, and never really wanted to do it because it made my thighs sore and gave me the biggest wedgie imaginable every time I lost my balance and hit the water going thirty miles per hour. I only did it because I thought I was supposed to. It was supposed to be fun. I did it, each time waiting for it to start feeling fun, even though, each time, it never did.
Before Jules died, we used to spend all our summer days down by the lake, together but separate: Sabina would spread her beach towel on the dock and work on her tan while Mom practiced water aerobics, shrieking every few minutes when a fish bit her nipple. Dad napped on the hammock with his mouth wide open, snoring like a motorboat while Jules swam underwater with his eyes open, looking for shells, interesting-looking rocks, and soggy, used-up firework wrappers. I’d sit in the sand and watch Gonzo as he’d wade through the water, staring at minnows and bluegills while they circled his giant black paws. His tail would wag rapidly while the rest of his body stood perfectly still, and when the moment was right, Gonzo would plunge into the water after the fish, then immediately look up at my family to see if anyone had been watching him. “Good boy, Gonzo!” we’d cheer, and he’d wag his tail faster, pleased and congratulated.
“Look,” Mom says, slows her pace to a halt, then turns to me. “Dere are many people who have lost dere kids in Battle Creek. So many of them have divorced. Loss, especially in a tragic accident, causes divorce. When Jules die, I just cry for years. I cry by myself a lot, and dis is fine. Both Daddy and I were at a loss, and we both kind of cried different times, but we talked, and now we are much closer because of it,” she says. “You have to talk. You and Andrew. You must talk to one another.”
After a long pause, she continues, “Mira, just guess how many couples?”
I think for a moment, and give no answer.
“So many,” she says, and after hearing her words, it feels like I should either clap or collapse. “You never get over it, you just learn how to live with it. I don’t have too much time left, so now I’d really like to live in the moment. With Jules, he is always with me. He is gone, but he’s in my heart. I miss him, I’m sad because you don’t have your brother, I don’t have my son. But, he was one hell of a kid.”
We hold hands and walk a little ways in silence until we finally reach the Crandalls’ house again. I ask for one last story.
“Before we go in, Mom, will you tell me once more about how you met Dad?”
I know her account by heart, and I want to hear it again. Maybe I want to put it up next to how Andrew and I met. Maybe I want her to see how I am seeing things: that she and I are very much alike, but not everything is the same. Not everything that is true for her is true for me. Her marriage and mine are completely and utterly different events: my parents met at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s hospital, in Chicago. Mom had just mastered English and gotten hired into a research lab in the pulmonology department where Dad was interning as a medical student. She worked in the lab where he was making his rounds. Dad was curly-haired and wet-eared. Mom was bashful and gorgeous, and she ignored him completely.
“And I was dating Herman Rabinovitch at the time,” she says. “I did like you daddy, though. But you daddy was so shy.” It was a long courtship. Dad finished school and went back to Georgetown, Herman ended up cheating on my mother, and a year later my parents fortuitously bought tickets for seats in the same row at the same theater on the same night—Brecht on Brecht—and that’s when they reconnected. I’ve heard the story a million times, but this time it sounds less romantic.
“First you dated, then you got married, then you lost your Catholic virginity,” I tease, “then you got pregnant, gave birth to Sabina, moved to Battle Creek, and then you had me! And the rest is history.”
“Well, not exactly. But something like that,” she replies with hesitation, which is surprising because this has always been that same exact plot.
“What do you mean? The story goes you guys found each other, got married, you got pregnant with Beanie on your wedding night, and then moved to Michigan.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Then what is missing?”
“I wasn’t a virgin.”
“No, Mom, you lost your virginity to Dad, right? On your wedding night, right? That’s what you told me. That’s what you’ve always said.”
Mom’s wedding night isn’t something I’ve imagined in vivid detail, but I’ve always figured she was chaste and pure and proper. Ever since I had my first training bra, Mom drilled it into my head that sex is a beautiful thing—once you are married—and I’ve been harboring guilt ever since I was sixteen and lost my innocence to Seth during a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon. (It was okay.)
“No,” she says under her breath. “It was to Herman.”
“What?”
“But I was a twenty-eight-year-old virgin!”
“Mom! Herman? ”
“But it was terrible.”
“Mom!” I yip. “Mom. All this time . . . really?”
“Shhh! Don’t tell your Daddy!” she whispers as we arrive back at our garage and go into the house.
In the evening, we will have our Thanks, But No Thanksgiving dinner. Mom will have roasted thirteen Cornish hens and mashed up sweet potatoes smothered in bourbon. She’ll dish up perfect, homemade borscht, kale, and pomegranate salad, butternut squash and creamed-spinach gratin, and we’ll give thanks. Between the salmon spread and pierogies, I’ll be thinking about Herman Rabinovitch and Mom’s minor moral blemish. I’ll start to feel a little better, and a little lighter. Hopeful, with a flicker of confidence. Brave. Then around midnight, Mom will ditch the pumpkin pie and serve tiramisu and pear tart instead, but I won’t get to try any of it because around midnight will be the time I arrive at the hospital in Kalamazoo.
But before that, while we are eating our dinner, Gonzo will be drooling and aimlessly nosing around the kitchen. He will start moaning. Then he will get worse. Dad is the sober one, so he will drive Gonzo, Andrew, and me to an emergency vet hospital in Kalamazoo while Mom tells our guests not to worry as she plates their desserts. Dad will carry the dog into the examining room, and after looking at some X-rays, it won’t take long for the vet to come to a conclusion. He’ll look into my dad’s eyes, not mine, and tell us that Gonzo’s stomach has flipped, that surgery for this type of thing on this old a dog would be dangerous and expensive. The vet will speak carefully and say that the dog may not even survive, and if he does, he’ll probably spend the rest of his days in pain and misery. “Fuck him and his diagnosis,” I’ll say to the vet, looking at Andrew, but Andrew will know what I really mean. What I really mean is that saying goodbye isn’t something I want to do, or even know how to do. What I mean is Gonzo is the last bit of Julian I think I have left, the last tangible bit of my youth, and that I am loath to let someone take something like that, something I love very much, away from me, too. But what I won’t realize just yet is that it will be the end of a story, a story that I have to let end in order for the next one to begin.
“Call Mom,” will be all I can spit out when Dad asks for my final verdict. “Just call Mom and ask her what she thinks we should do.” And after Mom and Dad talk about what we all know is right, the three of us—my father, my new husband, and I—will stand in a circle around the old dog and weep while we give him our last goodbye.
eighteen
The next Saturday, my professor holds class at his home in Brooklyn to discuss a book we’ve all been assigned to read—a memoir about misguided love, forbidden relationships, confessions. Basically, it’s a book about incest.
The library of my teacher’s house smells like coriander and the inside of a piano. My classmates and I all nod in agreement that it is a strange book, and as
we sit stiffly, facing one another in a circle on our professor’s couch and chairs, everyone is thinking about how the book has left us feeling uncomfortable, but nobody will just come out and say it.
“The purpose of this assignment,” our professor finally says, “was to show you how not to write.” During class I learn that the psychology of the author’s story is the same as what happened in the story, so this makes her story one-dimensional. He tells us that the book is not playful, and that art must be playful. I take lots of notes and ask lots of questions because I want to understand how to find what’s taking place underneath the surface of things and uproot it in my writing.
Today is my birthday. November 8, 2008. Sometime around six-thirty on this cold, gray morning, I turned twenty-nine. I was the first person to arrive at my professor’s house, and when I did, he gave me a beautiful cake, a hug, and told me I should throw away what I’m writing about (the Happy Spa) and write about “the uterus and the American dream” instead. After class ends, my professor, my classmates, and I all eat the cake. Andrew shows up, eats a piece of cake, too, then a handful of us walk to a nearby bar on Smith Street. The bar has a red, tin ceiling, a bartender who wears a bowtie and a white apron, and a jukebox that plays Motown songs and rockabilly oldies, ones by Smokey Robinson and Roy Orbison. One of my classmates has two cocktails, then tells me I’m such a smarty, a teacher’s pet.
“Look,” I tell him, “I’m almost thirty years old, I took out two huge loans for higher education, and I am not going to just sit on my thumbs and wait for something good to happen to me.” What my classmate doesn’t know is that sometimes I sing the alphabet to know which letter comes before the other.
None of them ever says anything about the baby. They’ve never asked how I might be feeling. They saw me when I was pregnant, they knew and had congratulated me, but they haven’t said anything since then. Do they think the baby just disappeared? What wouldn’t they ask?
“I already have an agent for my book,” my classmate replies.