The Nearness of You

by Amanda Eyre Ward

  “She’s run away,” said Hyland. “She’s kidnapped our baby.”

  “Dr. Kendall?” said Leslie.

  “I’ll call you back in a few hours,” said Suzette. “I’m sure she’ll show up, honey.”

  “She left a note for me. It was taped to her front door,” said Hyland. “She says she’s sorry. She says she’s never coming back.”

  3

  Dorrie

  The morning of the sonogram had loomed large on my calendar; I’d told myself that by that day I had to make my final decision to stay put or escape. I knew that not showing up would trigger a manhunt. Suzette Kendall was not a woman you wanted to fuck with (pardon my French!).

  I tried to confide in my mother, but when I told her the first part of the story—that I’d signed up to be a surrogate—she freaked out so completely that I didn’t have the strength to continue. I should have known she’d never understand. As she’d told me many times, if she’d never gotten pregnant with me, my father might still be around. The concept of valuing a baby, protecting your daughter, cherishing her…these were not ideas that held any traction with Patsy Black Muscarello. Because of me, she’d lost her husband. That was her sorry tale. I felt for her, but I was going to create a totally different life. One built on love and security, on loyalty and kindness. I guess, in retrospect, I can see that I was trying to fix her mistakes in a way, to heal my own wounds of abandonment by holding on to you. But I guess that’s the way the world works—you try to do better than your parents. Is that so wrong? Sometimes you succeed and sometimes you do not.

  On the night before the big appointment, I could not sleep. I tossed and twisted, eventually opening my favorite book, The Awakening by Kate Chopin. (I bought it after seeing the movie.) I identified with Edna, the protagonist, despite her unfortunate, watery end.

  Years before, I had underlined Mademoiselle Reisz’s conversation with Edna in my hardback copy of the book:

  “And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”

  “What do you mean by the courageous soul?”

  “Courageous, ma foi! The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.”

  —

  In the middle of the night, my favorite book spoke to me. I wanted to be a brave soul. It seemed so clear: I would drive away from Texas and make a life on Grand Isle, Louisiana!

  It took no time at all to pack pajamas, a few favorite outfits, prenatal vitamins, and some novels to keep me from feeling lonely. My mother’s snoring anchored the house to the ground. I felt light as I started my car and drove away, the Texas Atlas & Gazetteer on my lap. Your father had bought and mailed me the tome after I’d been late to my insemination appointment. There had even been a note in the package: Hope this is helpful! Warmly, Hyland & Suzette.

  Warmly! The worst salutation in the book, as bloodless as Sincerely Yours or Best Wishes but with an added edge of sleaze. Still, I had taken a bottle of Wite-Out from my desk, erased Suzette’s name, and put the note in my bedside table.

  The drive to Grand Isle would take over six hours, which seemed tiring but possible. For you, I would forgo my favorite pick-me-up, Diet Coke. (I have never liked coffee. I like sweet things—soda and toffee peanuts. Do you?)

  I let myself fall into a reverie as I drove, trying to imagine my entirely new life. A cottage on an isle. My daughter—you—with coltish legs and small, pink sneakers. A job at a quiet seaside restaurant, or maybe a bookstore? A new diary in which to write. A new library card, one for us to share. I could buy a little basket and fill it with sunscreen and bug spray. Plastic water wings, when you were old enough to swim. Maybe a porch, a sleeping porch, with a swing where we could read.

  Somehow, I knew you were a girl, and that I would name you Zelda. The Kendalls’ name for you was Eloise, after your father’s dead sister. So sad! His whole family had been killed in a car accident, leaving him alone at age eleven. It had been this story that had drawn me to him, during our initial meeting at the Yo Ho Ho. This story and his seersucker pants, the first I had ever seen worn by a man who was not in a movie. The pants made me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and then, of course, of his wife, Zelda. (In addition to novels, I read biographies, the wilder the better.)

  It was the perfect name for you. You would be tempestuous, impossible to resist, powerful. You would be everything I wished I could be.

  4

  Suzette

  The police department had told the Kendalls to call back after twenty-four hours to file a missing persons report. When Suzette was finished for the day, she and Hyland drove to the Fertility Clinic of Houston, where Margaret, the secretary, agreed that this was an unfortunate development but reminded Suzette that they were not legally responsible for this (or any) situation arising outside the specific instances outlined in the multitudinous forms that Hyland and Suzette had signed. Also, Margaret noted, the office should have closed at six, and she was truly sorry, but they had to go home, or if not home, elsewhere.

  Suzette slid into a heightened state that felt familiar—as a girl, she’d come home many times to be completely shocked by what her mother’s mind had wrought: new couches delivered; a teenage boy in his underpants, eating Froot Loops; a gun Suzette’s mother insisted they needed to protect themselves against the government or alien abductors. After a while, Suzette’s fear just sort of…burned out, and she approached her childhood home on Chokecherry Lane with a measured calm, ready for anything.

  “What have we done?” said Hyland.

  “It’s under control,” Suzette muttered.

  “Under control?” said Hyland.

  “I’m truly sorry,” said Margaret, jangling the office keys.

  “We get it,” said Suzette. “We’re leaving.”

  —

  The drive from the fertility clinic to their Bellaire home took half an hour. Hyland almost rear-ended a Jaguar getting off the interstate, and when Suzette shrieked, Hyland pulled the car over. “I’m not feeling very well,” he said.

  “Oh, OK, I can drive,” said Suzette. “You want me to drive?” This was—in their fifteen years of marriage—the first time Hyland had ever asked her to take over the wheel. Even when he was tipsy, he insisted he was fine. Suzette had been in a number of fender-benders and one big accident, totaling her grad school Honda turning left when she didn’t have the right-of-way, so she was usually more than happy to sit in the passenger seat.

  But now Hyland nodded. Suzette looked over her shoulder as she walked around the car to reach the driver’s seat. On the wall opposite, someone had used spray paint to write NEVER GIVE UP under a row of Pac-Mans.

  “Got to admire the sentiment,” she commented, as she put the car in gear.

  “What?” said Hyland.

  “Never give up,” said Suzette, pointing.

  “Oh,” said Hyland.

  “It’s going to be OK,” said Suzette.

  “I know.”

  Suzette turned left on Wesleyan, left on Essex, right on Drexel. Their elegant home was lit up, the sconces on either side of the grand front door blazing. Suzette pulled into the garage. The classical station played at low volume until Suzette cut the engine. Hyland did not move. “I’m gutted,” he said. “That’s the word. Gutted. I want…” He did not finish.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” said Suzette.

  —

  As she was pulling on her bathrobe later that night, Suzette’s beeper went off. She called the hospital to listen to the report: a patient’s oxygen saturation levels were dropping. Suzette approved the protocol, adding, “I’ll be right there.”

  “You are not going in,” said Hyland, from the bathroom, where he’d been brushing his teeth.

  “Yes, Hyland, I am.” Something changed in the air then; Suzette sensed it immediately. She turned toward her husband, whose eyes were steely.

  “Don’t you feel anything?” he hissed.

  “Hyland…”

  “You don’t care because it’s not
your fucking baby,” said Hyland.

  Suzette went cold. “I don’t think you mean that,” she managed.

  “You’re right,” said Hyland, his shoulders caving forward as the venom seeped from him. “I don’t mean that. I’m sorry.” He sat down on their bed. “I just don’t see how you can leave…not knowing where she is…”

  “What good does it do for me to be here?” said Suzette.

  “I know,” said Hyland. His awful retort had taken the last of his energy.

  Suzette took Hyland’s hand. It was chilly, his fingers limp. His wedding ring had once been his own father’s—Suzette had balked at his wearing the ghoulish gold band, which had been salvaged from the wreckage after the accident, but Hyland had insisted. He was sentimental, which she loved about him, but she saw now how sentimentality could lead to ineffectiveness, could make Hyland maudlin and lethargic when action was required. No matter: Suzette was strong enough for the both of them.

  “I’m sorry,” said Hyland.

  “It’s OK.”

  “It’s not OK. The baby’s just as much yours as mine, and I’m sorry.”

  He looked old, her Hyland, in his rumpled pajamas. Suzette remembered a night in Paris, during their honeymoon, when they had wandered the city for hours, stopping in for a drink or snack at cafés they came across. Hyland still smoked then, and he was thin and shining, speaking passable French. He had friends in Paris from the year he’d studied abroad. Suzette, a hick from upstate New York, was giddy with possession: she couldn’t believe that this genius, this artist, was hers.

  Now, his eyes were red, his face lined. Despite his weekly adult ice hockey league (he’d been a right wing in college), he had a sake belly. Had she made him helpless somehow, by taking such care?

  “She’s just as much mine as she is yours,” echoed Suzette. Hyland leaned over and pulled her toward him. He smelled like tomato soup. Why did he smell like tomato soup? For a moment, resting her head against her husband’s chest, Suzette felt like a scared girl again, unsure of what the rules were, not knowing how to proceed and if she’d ever feel normal, like the kids on The Cosby Show or Family Ties, joking around with parents who didn’t seem to need taking care of.

  5

  Dorrie

  I was the only person on Louisiana Highway 1. I sighed with relief upon seeing a sign reading WELCOME TO GRAND ISLE—WHERE EVERY DAY IS AN ADVENTURE! The quiet town, decimated every few years by one hurricane or another, was definitely the end of the line, the place where Highway 1 ran into the gulf. I cruised along the potholed road—almost underwater in some sections—until I spotted a gas station, pulling in. I was ravenous and so tired I felt as if I were drunk.

  I wasn’t, of course, and never would be. My mother’s drinking and depression had made me a teetotaler for life. This is something you should know: you have demons in your genes. Stay away, far away, from booze or whatever else. I hope you’ll never know how sadness can twist your heart, and make you a stranger to yourself. And seeking numbness only makes it worse. By the time I reconnected with your grandmother, she was a missing person, sitting right there in my childhood house on K½ Street. Even over the phone, her ghostly voice made me furious and scared.

  But back to the story. In Grand Isle, I asked a convenience store clerk about nearby hotels.

  “Sure,” said the clerk, holding up fingers as he counted options. “There’s the Cajun Holiday Motel, the Sandpiper Shores, Ricky’s RV Park, the Seahorse Cottages…”

  “The Seahorse Cottages,” I said, liking the cheerful name. I picked out Twinkies, Combos, mixed nuts, gum, and another Sprite. I had stolen four hundred dollars from my mother’s underwear drawer, and was giddy with freedom and what seemed to me like wealth.

  The Seahorse, a motley collection of wooden structures on stilts, seemed deserted. I rang the bell outside what seemed to be an office. After a few minutes, a woman with white hair wearing an oversize T-shirt that read CAJUN FISHING RODEO 1989 came to the door, rubbing her eyes. “Ma’am?” she asked, stifling a yawn with her palm.

  I asked to rent a cottage.

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “You in trouble?” she asked.

  I allowed that yes, I was.

  The woman crossed her arms over her chest, considering. “Like man trouble?” she said, raising bushy eyebrows.

  “Um, yes,” I said, not lying, not exactly.

  The woman held open the door. “Come on in,” she said. “You’ll be safe here.” She handed me a key from the board behind the desk. She wore fuzzy slippers and her hair was gathered in a pink rubber band. “Cottage Three’s open,” she said. “Get some sleep.”

  I remember her kindness to this day.

  Cottage 3 was run-down, the sagging bed covered in a garish comforter that clashed with the flowered shirt hung on a crooked rod above the bureau. There was a painting of a frightened-looking starfish, its one wide eye seeming to follow me around the room. The “kitchenette” was a microwave and a coffeepot, and when I pushed open the bathroom door, a roach scurried under the sink.

  I lay down, already feeling badly for hurting your father and Suzette. I knew they must have been frantic. But I had simply not understood what it would feel like, back when I first walked into the Yo Ho Ho and saw the Kendalls—so perfect, like a storybook version of parents. They had stood, rising to greet me, and I had wanted to be their daughter myself.

  In Cottage 3, I talked to you. I told you I could give you more than they could, though we’d never have a fancy house or a Lexus like the one Suzette drove. It seemed, however impossibly, that everything was going to work out. I had escaped my mother and her misery, and I was on an adventure like the ones I read about in the novels I loved.

  I was the best English student at Ball High School. I want you to know that. I’m not badly educated or without grace. My spring semester, I thought I’d get a scholarship. I really thought that. But it turns out that being the best English student at a Galveston high school doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay for college. I was accepted to Rice, the so-called Harvard of Texas. But along with the jubilant letter and the glossy pictures came the tuition information. Even with loans, even with work-study, even if I lived under a tarp somewhere on campus, it was impossible. Getting into Rice University remains my greatest academic accomplishment.

  Sometimes, when I see tourists come into Walgreens, smelling of expensive perfumes and chattering as if I’m not even there, ringing up their Advil or toothpaste, a part of me wants to scream, I’m one of you! I almost went to Rice University! But it isn’t true. I’m not one of them. I’m a cautionary tale, a former teenage mother turned middle-aged, a woman who dyes her hair with Clairol and reads a book a week from the library, taking online classes in philosophy and British literature, clicking away on her old desktop Dell computer deep into the night, trying to make her brain stronger, trying to make up for four sun-dappled years on a campus she’d never even visit.

  That’s who I’ve become. Just so you know.

  6

  Suzette

  Suzette drove to St. Luke’s, turned in to the hospital garage, parked, and then sat in her car. Her hands shook as she brought them to her face. She needed a shower. She needed a coffee. Her beeper went off again.

  Trembling, Suzette took her phone from her purse. She paused before entering the code to retrieve her messages. When she heard the report—her patient’s stats were now normal, and he was resting comfortably—she dialed Meg. Her phone rang twice and then Meg answered, “Suzette?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you found Dorrie?”

  “No,” said Suzette.

  “Jesus H. Christ! I always knew there was something off about that girl. Sorry, I’m not saying the right things here.”

  Suzette managed a weary chuckle.

  “Come over,” said Meg. “No, wait, let’s get pancakes. You know the IHOP on Westheimer?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think? Or you could come here. Or do
you want me to…”

  “IHOP,” said Suzette, starting her car. “I’m driving there right now.”

  “OK, me, too,” said Meg. “Well, I need to change first. You should see this filthy outfit Stew got for our anniversary assignation.”

  “Leather?” asked Suzette.

  “Pleather,” said Meg. “I’m pro-animal, you know that.” She was silent for a moment, and then said, “It’s going to be OK, Suze.”

  “Is it?”

  “Hyland sounded terrible when I called the house,” said Meg.

  “He’s losing it,” said Suzette.

  “This is surreal,” said Meg. “Some nut is pregnant with his baby…and now she’s run off…it’s like an episode of Law & Order. God, I’m sorry! Again, not saying the right things…”

  Suzette had stopped listening. She should check on her patients. She should prep for her meeting about the Fletcher boy. She should go home and hold her husband. Normally decisive, she sat paralyzed, unable to put the car in reverse or park. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

  “I’m out of my pleather sex suit,” said Meg. “I’m walking to my car.”

  “I should go to work,” said Suzette. To speak about the Fletcher boy, she had to be completely composed.

  “Work can wait,” said Meg.

  “It can’t,” said Suzette. Kevin Fletcher was going to rip her apart when she told him they were taking his son off the list. Suzette closed her eyes.

  “But it will,” said Meg. “I’m starting my engine. I’ll see you in twenty.”

  “OK,” said Suzette. She reversed her sedan and drove away from the hospital. She hadn’t been to IHOP in years, but remembered every turn perfectly. The pancake house was a comforting sight in the predawn darkness, its awnings royal blue, its parking lot well lit and filled with a surprising number of cars.

  Inside, Suzette saw Meg sitting at a corner booth. She felt her shoulders release as soon as Meg looked up and smiled. Suzette approached, and Meg stood. She’d tied her hair back and wore jeans with a blank white T-shirt. Meg pulled her close, and Suzette—embarrassing herself—went limp in Meg’s arms, inhaling Meg’s syrup-and-hairspray smell.