Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

  “DAD!” the kid says. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Phantom Stranger,” Stanley says.

  I whack him in the arm. “Who the hell is that?”

  “He’s the one who just shows up, does his thing, and vanishes. At home nowhere. Could be he works for God, could be the Devil, but probably neither.”

  “Since when do you read comic books?”

  “Aw, hell,” he says, playing the rube.

  I look him over and say, “Stanley, why are you still here? You’ve done way above the call of duty.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  “I know the chicken slammer isn’t much, but it’s got to be better than this.”

  “I like hospitals,” he says. “Besides, it’ll save me the trip if I’m already here.”

  “What, for when superplague rips through Park Avenue?”

  The mother shoots me an angry look, like: Watch your mouth in front of the kid. Because the kid lives on Mars? Everyone knows about the plague. And if you’re into superheroes, you were into the plague way before it was into you. Figuring the average superhero’s prototype is Jesus Christ, and that comeuppance in the Bible tends to manifest in the paranormal ague, survey says the kid who reads comics is as reared in apocalyptic bacteria as the next guy.

  “At least go eat something decent,” I say.

  “I’ll ask one of the nurses if she’s got any sherbet.”

  “Stanley.” I press a twenty in his hand. “Go have a meat item, please.”

  He grins. I know he’s just going to buy jerky and a bag of Doritos, but maybe he’ll buy jerky, Doritos, and a PowerBar, in which case: progress.

  “I’m going to try to catch a nap,” I say.

  “Good.”

  “Not really. But what else am I gonna do? Stay awake while Izzy dies? This is horrible.”

  He kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry, baby. I’ll be back in a sec, I’m just going to hit the cafeteria. You need food? A yogurt? We need to keep you strong, you know.”

  He is so doting, it’s hard to take. I wish he would just go back to Wanda’s.

  I watch him leave, then turn my attention to the TV, which is, apparently, a dawn of spleen for the husband and wife, wife who wants CNN, husband who wants silence, husband who cannot carp because his wife’s father is sick, which makes her right in all things until the father dies and for at least several weeks after that.

  CNN it is. The husband cannot stand it. I try to divine the problem. Ah, here it is. The husband is irate because his sickly father-in-law has kept them in the city when he’d much prefer to flee to safer ground. The footage on the news is of people brawling for gas at a Shell station in East Hampton.

  I watch him make for the coffee machine, which will engineer a cup according to criteria of his choice. He goes for three sugars, half-and-half, and full-body roast. I am just closing my eyes when I hear a voice I know saying, “Yes, in about two weeks or so,” and Stanley saying, “That’s wonderful news.”

  “Eric?” I say. It’s him. “What are you doing here? Is it Kam? Is she all right?”

  He squats by my chair and takes my hand. “Stanley called me. I’m so sorry.”

  I get up for no reason. I don’t like anything that happens behind my back, but I’m also not thinking, so I just stand there while he fits his arms around me and pulls. My face is in his collar, I breathe in deep. There is cologne and hair gel, also a deodorant, but I’m in it for the smell of his room, his clothes and sheets.

  He ushers me into a chair and sits down. I notice Stanley move to the other side of the lounge. He is so discreet. And he seems to know what I need, always.

  “So everything’s fine?” I say.

  Eric nods. “How is your mom?”

  “Not good. They don’t think she’ll last the day. She has a DNR.”

  “Oh, that’s awful. You’ve been having such a bad run. I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s okay. But look, there’s no reason for you to be here. I’ve got Stanley. It’s fine.”

  We look his way. He is entertaining the boy.

  Eric says, “Wasn’t he trying to find a surrogate or something? How’s that going?”

  “He gave up. Though not because of plague. There were other problems.”

  “Did he ask—”

  “No, he didn’t ask me. I couldn’t deal with it then. Probably I can’t deal with it now. Or ever, for that matter.”

  “Don’t say that, Lucy. You will make a great mother.”

  “Oh, stop it.”

  “What? I’m serious. You’re caring and loyal and attentive—”

  I put my hand on his arm. “You really don’t have to stay. I mean it.”

  He takes off his jacket and slings it over the chair. I look at his hands, and then I look at him.

  “Listen,” I say. “There’s something I should have said yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about how I sprung that on you. I should have told you months ago.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just, you can’t imagine how bad I felt about missing your wedding.”

  “That? Forget it. It’s old news.”

  “It’s not. I really meant to go. But I was such a wreck, I got the dates mixed up. But that’s hardly the point. That’s not why I didn’t make it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I feel the urge to smack him for being so dense.

  “If I’d really meant to go, I would have checked the invite more than once, or read it more carefully.”

  “You should probably be telling Kam this stuff and not me. She misses you.”

  “And I’ve missed you. So we have a problem.”

  “Lucy, we’re about to have our first child.”

  “I’m all too aware.”

  He leans forward so I can’t see his face. This is for the best. I had no plans to be having this conversation, but then that’s usually how things go.

  “And in case you’re still not clear on it,” I say, “the problem is that I still love you. I do. And I’m beginning to think I can’t be trusted not to act on it, baby or not. So just help me. If I call, don’t call me back. If I e-mail, don’t reply.”

  He’s still leaning forward, which can only mean he’s afraid to look at me. I understand. No one wants to know how much he’s hurt you. “Lucy,” he ventures. “You’re being dramatic. You’re our friend. And because of everything that’s been happening and how we’ve all been so afraid for so long, I’m coming to see not much else matters but your friends and family.”

  He looks at me by accident, so now he knows.

  Tears withheld yesterday are now in free fall. I tell him to go home because this won’t get any easier for me, and he’s not helping. He asks if I’m sure. He asks if he can call me later. Yes I am sure, no he cannot.

  I follow him out and make for the single-person bathroom down the hall. I keep it together as best I can until it’s vacant. Soon as I’m behind the door, though, it all comes out. I droop to the tile. I stuff a wad of paper towels in my mouth to dampen the sound. The pain in my chest is exquisite, and the keening from my throat is pitched so high, no one at the door can detect how awful I feel, which is probably by design, too, nature’s way of protecting us from evidence of the pain we cause each other.

  I look like a basset hound. I have one of those faces that doesn’t just pouch with grief, it billows. I could probably wipe each eye with my cheek.

  The tears have stopped and I feel exhausted. How many times have I looked at myself like this? I lean over the sink. Again I am off schedule, but what the hell. Hands clapped, head down: God—I still don’t know what else to call you—but God, I don’t know that I can get over what just happened. I’m not that strong, and I don’t know how long I can wait for you. Is the idea that you take away from me everyone I love so I can grow? Am I supposed to heal as a result? And then there were two? Lif and Lifthraser? I know that if you exist, you can see me. You know I’m trying the best I can. Why isn’t that e
nough? It’s not enough because I can try harder? Because I should want it more? What if I just can’t? What if rehab has been no help? Or what if it could have helped if not for all the horrible shit you keep dumping on me?

  I am self-centered, I am alone. And it just got worse. I have no one I can talk to. No, that’s not true. There’s no one I can get myself to talk to. If I am my own worst problem, then fix me. Or just send me the courage to give up. Any day now, they are going to lock down the city. No one gets in, no one gets out. I’m scared everyone I know is going to die. I’m scared I’m going to die. And not just in a flash, but in some gruesome, horrible manner. I’m scared of what’s going to happen. I don’t want to lose my mom. But I’m not asking you to save her. Or me. Not even the other people I love. My needs are just too crude for that. I am a child, I have the emotional wherewithal of a child, but at least that allows me to be honest. It might be the one thing I’m good at. So even though I don’t have to tell you, because you’re supposed to know, I’m gonna say it anyhow, or ask, or pray, okay, I’m going to pray.

  Dear God, please take away this hurt because I cannot stand it, and I want a chance, maybe just one more chance to show up for my life and to enjoy it, even if it’s only for a day or a couple hours, I just want a chance, the same as the next guy, though I know I deserve it less.

  I return to the waiting room, but Stanley is gone. I guess he saw the whole thing with Eric. Meantime, the superhero kid is staring at me without restraint.

  “Are you sick, too?” he asks.

  His mother apologizes. Her face isn’t far behind mine.

  A nurse steps in, calls my name. She seems riled, like where was I when she needed me. I follow her through double doors, down a hall, down another hall, to Mother’s area. The nurse opens the curtain, which has the air of exposing someone naked in the shower.

  “Ten minutes,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  My mother’s been intubated. Multiple IVs congregate at the roof of each of her hands. I can’t see clear to a part of her body I can touch, and she can’t talk, which means we are both denied ways to communicate that suit each other best. I ask if she’s in pain. She nods. I say it’ll be over soon. She nods. I sit by her bed, we stare at each other. I am glad I look so wretched because if I’ve never said it before, she’ll know just from seeing me now. Ten minutes pass, but no one arrives to kick me out. From the wall extends a metal arm at the end of which is a TV I position in front of her bed. I say scoot over. She can’t weigh more than eighty or ninety pounds, so when she doesn’t move, I slip my arms under her knees and back, and lift. The IVs are not disturbed. She hardly seems to have noticed. I turn on the TV and lie down next to her. There is the local news—plague, plague—the national news—plague, plague—and, beautifully, The Wizard of Oz.

  I left when it was over. I don’t know exactly when my mother died, just that it was after our heroes walk down the yellow brick road, but before any of them gets what he wants.

  Forty-two

  If I only had a heart, that’s what I checked out on. It was peaceful and a long time coming. The death with dignity initiative is a good one, though dying in hospital really isn’t so bad, either. But now that I’m up here, I’m not certain the rush was advisable. My peer group is bizarre. And the one whose body is shellacked in welts—he’s vile. What I need is to park myself in a corner and think. To think clearly, which I can do at last. What happened to me? I remember when Lucy was young, she’d watch that cartoon bunny who was always popping out of a bad hole and saying he must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. She’d get fixated on that part, and I guess now I understand why. What provocation! To intend Denmark and get Sri Lanka, to mean well but ruin everything—there’s no accounting for that kind of misfire except to throw your hands up and blame New Mexico, in which Roswell, in which aliens, in which all insoluble phenomena find a home.

  Can I speak with authority about drug addiction? No. But I can say I didn’t know how to stop, and that, in some measure, I didn’t want to stop. That the pain of living without drugs was unsustainable. What did I do before cocaine? It’s hard to remember. I loved and was loved. I started Syn, the company took off. I hired a team, came to the States. Even then, immigration law was so complex and xenophobic, I was denied a Green Card three times. What kind of story was that going to make? Return of the prodigal? So I could watch my parents molder on the shores of Norway? I met a scientist who proposed to keep me in New York for all my days. I accepted. And here is where things get banal. I had this, I had that, I was bored. And lonely. Michael was in D.C. most of the time, though his whereabouts didn’t exactly impact my mood. Agneth was living in Paris. My sisters were estranged, from each other and me. I had loved and been loved, and began to think of it less like an opportunity missed than the only opportunity I was ever going to get. I started to obsess. I had never obsessed about anything in my life, I’d simply wanted and pursued and accomplished. It was singleness of purpose. But Dag, or thoughts of what might have been with Dag, came at me as if they’d been stalking me for years. Which they probably had. So picture it: tigress stalks doe for hours; you think, once she’s got it, she’ll let go for anything? Not a chance.

  A heartbroken man with polio isn’t likely to stray far from his place of woe; he was as I had left him in Bergen, working for an accountant. It was easy to hire him away. Easier still to move him to New York. We had business lunches once a week. He walked with crutches that cuffed his upper arms. We never once discussed chances past, but he never dated, never married, and it was by way of declaring status quo. And that was good. Less good was having to learn that Dag, his being there, would not placate my needs and, in fact, for having failed, would make them worse. What was I missing? Why so restless? I hardly noticed when the quest began, only that it was perpetual.

  The years went by. I’m told I was austere. My staff was afraid of me. My friends were afraid of me. Fortune said I was cutthroat, and several colleagues quoted in the piece agreed.

  When Syn stock went public, Michael and I split a bottle of champagne. When the CDC bumped him up, Bulgari helped us celebrate. And so my marriage. We had an understanding, and in the sense that we’d both choose our work over each other, we had much in common. Even when I began to doubt my priorities, I respected his enough not to let on. I had brought Dag over in secret. On the sly, I steeped my body in remedial herbs of the Orient. I ate slabs of Lindt chocolate by the dozen. Wine spritzers were a vice. Pottery classes thrice a week. Asatru blots at the ambassador’s residence, for which you had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Acupuncture, yoga, jujitsu, origami. My days were plentied, but I was bored.

  And then, an accident. I was waiting to meet a Balkan astrologer who rented office space from an ob-gyn on the Upper East Side. An odd arrangement, but then I got the impression the astrologer was part tenant, part escort. While she was detained, I picked up a baby magazine. Later, after the astrologer had promised change—could be financial, emotional, salutary, shocking—I was having conjugal thoughts in which ratio of unprotected intercourse to months of no consequence suddenly seemed indicative. And then devastating. I could not have a child? But I wanted a child! That was it, a child! I went home and began to research the problem like a fanatic. The first IVF baby was still six years off, but hormonal treatments were available. I do not recall what the problem was, something about low estrogen or progesterone and exigent fallopian taper, but I did what had to be done, and when it finally took, I thought I was fixed.

  Postpartum depression? Not really. Soon as the initial euphoria wore off, I knew that even as I’d love my child, my child was not going to make things bearable. Because that’s what had happened, I don’t know when, but one day in my third trimester I came to understand that my life was unbearable. Thirty-six hours and one C-section later, I had a baby girl. And a man I once cared for. Also: a husband in D.C., a business with no rival, money money money, the envy of friends I didn’t much like, a dilettante’s interest in N
orse mythology, some stocks, and an invitation to the Met to see La fille du régiment with the then moderately known Luciano Pavarotti. February 17, 1972, and I was there. Let me try to explain. The first two minutes of the aria “Pour mon âme” are pleasant enough, jaunty and bright, with a modicum of gravitas. The next two minutes bring in the chorus and another singer, and it, too, is pleasant. Donizetti wrote some lovely music. But even if it were tripe, Pavarotti’s tenor voice is inimitable. At five minutes in, the real beauty of the aria begins. Melodic and lyrical, the sort of music that actually makes your heart soar. Unless you love opera, I don’t know if that expression does anything justice. He sang it beautifully, and we were delighted. But the real test was on deck. “Pour mon âme” is notorious for its high Cs, nine to be precise, and for how no one sings them except in falsetto, which is, technically, cheating. Of course, when everyone cheats, cheating’s fine. In ’72, a Met audience knew its stuff and what it could expect. So when Pavarotti ripped through the first two high Cs, it was, perhaps, the most breathtaking thing any of us had ever heard. It made your skin bristle. That sweetness, the brilliance and fire. I could not breathe. I looked down my row and no one else was breathing, either. All you could see was the twinkle of eyes wide, many crying. I cried. And when he held that last C, for seven seconds, the rapture was almost too much. I wonder now if the experience was what some call a religious transport. I don’t know. Certainly we were too frenzied then to recognize what had become of us. The cheering and ovations. The inability to applaud enough, to express enough—when I left the hall with my friends, I wanted only to retain that feeling of utter abandon. My baby was at home, needing to be breast-fed; a few blocks away was the Rainbow Room, with cocktails and banter and oysters and vista. Neither would continue the ecstasy we’d just experienced, but I wanted to try. February 17, 1972. Lucy was just over a month old. I’d left her with a German nanny, daughter of my PR director, and gone to the Met. Then the Rainbow Room. The second of the Twin Towers would open next year. We were sixty-five floors up. I imagined the excess of the city—the hubris of these buildings prodding the sky—might approximate something of that God-given voice and, I don’t know, stoke my temperament, because, as I was beginning to understand, the only way to treat mania is with more mania.