Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties: A Novel

by Camille Pagán

  I, on the other hand, loved my children more than Adam—no question. It was a different sort of love, but I would have given my life for them without hesitation. Whereas if Adam had offered me the only piece of driftwood in the ocean as the Titanic sank in the distance, I probably would have accepted it so that I could have more time with my son and daughter, whom I loved not just more than my husband, but also myself.

  And yet as I made the drive back to Chicago, I acknowledged that supporting my children was not the only reason I had agreed to come in for Adam’s surgery.

  “You’re a miracle worker, Maggie,” he had said to me as he placed Zoe in my arms moments after I had given birth to her. His tears fell on my breast even as Zoe put her mouth to it, and I gazed up at him with more love than I ever had, because he had just handed me my world.

  Adam had given me both his DNA and his blessing to make mothering my life’s work. I suppose in a way, I felt I owed it to him to be there for the kids as he had asked.

  But even beyond that sense of obligation, something else was plaguing me.

  When I tried to imagine the future—not the far-off future, but even a few days or weeks after Adam’s surgery—I could not come up with a single scene in which Adam was present. While I was no soothsayer, this suggested to me that there was a distinct possibility that he was right, and he would not make it through the surgery. If that were the case, then our parting at the courthouse would be our final goodbye.

  In spite of the many ways he had hurt me, I did not want us to end that way. And so I would honor his request and be there when he went into surgery. Not just for our children and Adam—but also for myself.

  “Maggie. Is that actually you?”

  Adam was lying back on a hospital bed with an IV running into his arm. He was not tall and had always been on the slight side, but he looked like a shriveled version of himself beneath the thin sheet, and I wanted to weep. I had slipped down a WebMD rabbit hole for nearly two hours the day before. Though double bypass was minimally invasive and would only require a small incision through Adam’s ribs, an irregular heartbeat, memory problems, and stroke were a small sampling of complications that might befall Adam after surgery. Even patients who received a clean bill of health could drop dead for no apparent reason.

  I lingered near the curtains partitioning Adam from the rest of the surgical prep area. “Don’t get up,” I said, trying to sound normal. “The last thing we need is for you to have another heart attack.”

  He managed a smile, and I wondered if my being here for his surgery was the start of a healthy new relationship between us. Maybe we could be loving, respectful co-parents, like . . . well, not like anyone I personally knew, but I heard it happened all the time. Of course, this was only an option if he survived. “I know the kids said you were coming, but I didn’t believe it until I saw your face,” he said.

  “Well, here I am,” I said in what I hoped was a chipper tone. “Jack and Zoe are on their way from the airport now. I just wanted to let you know I was here. So good luck today. You’ll be fine.”

  His eyes went cold at the mention of surgery. “They say there’s a five to seven percent chance I won’t survive this,” he said.

  The air was sterile and suffocating, and medical monitors beeped in the background. “I’d say those are pretty good odds,” I lied. They were good odds for a stranger. For Adam, even a one percent risk was too high.

  He shook his head. “Maybe. I still can’t shake the feeling I’m not going to beat them.”

  “Don’t catastrophize, Adam. That’s my job.”

  “My father, though.”

  “You’ve got your mother’s genes going for you,” I insisted. “Dementia might actually be the first health problem she’s had in eighty years.”

  The lines in his forehead softened. Despite my own high anxiety levels, I had always been the one to talk Adam down from the ledge, and there I was, performing my wifely rescue routine once again. I wanted to hate him—he had given up the right to count on me when he first served me divorce papers—but I couldn’t actually fault him for reverting to old comforts hours before major surgery. There was almost something comforting about it for me, too. “I hope you’re right,” he said.

  A nurse pushed past the curtain into the partitioned area. “How are we feeling?” she asked as she fiddled with Adam’s IV bag.

  “Never better,” he said with false bravado.

  “Glad to hear it. The anesthesiologist is going to swing by to speak with you in just a few.”

  “Listen, I should go,” I said to Adam. “Good luck in there. You’re going to do great.”

  “I hope so.” His expression landed somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “Thank you for being here, Maggie. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for you, but it means a lot to me.”

  I had been working so hard to get over him, and in a sick way his confession about Jillian had probably sped the process. But now that he was teetering on the precipice of life itself, it was all I could do to try to remember why we were no longer husband and wife. I found myself wondering whether I had been right to move so far away from him, to rule out all possibility of our having a future together. For the first time since Rome, I didn’t know. “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “It’s a lot,” he said.

  The word Love had been woven into the blue-and-beige curtains partitioning Adam from the rest of the room. I pulled my eyes from it as I responded to him. “You’re welcome,” I said. “Don’t die.”

  Zoe rushed into the waiting room, where I had been nervously flipping through a tattered Redbook. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her chin was wobbling like it had when she was a small girl on the verge of a meltdown.

  “Oh, love, I’m sorry. I know this is hard,” I murmured as she sat beside me.

  “So hard,” she warbled, burying her face in my shoulder. When she caught her breath, she added, “It’s just—hasn’t the past year been enough already? I don’t want Daddy to die.”

  I put one of my arms around her and the other around Jack, who had squeezed next to me on the other side of the love seat. “It’s going to be fine,” I said, because I could not get my mouth to say the words, “He won’t die.” “We have each other, and your father is heading into surgery knowing he has his family’s support. I know that means a lot to him.”

  “He’s happy you’re here, Mom,” said Jack. For all of my son’s tough talk about how his father had treated me, he still wanted us to be together. I understood. Adam’s heart condition was nothing if not a reminder that life can turn on a dime. Now more than ever, it was impossible not to want everything to be like it used to be.

  “I know,” I said, squeezing Jack’s hand. “I am, too.”

  The hours crawled by. The three of us stared at our phones and paced the halls and made multiple trips to the cafeteria. Jack eventually fell asleep on a recliner, and Zoe toiled over a brief on her laptop. I retrieved a novel from my bag, but it was no use; even Laurie Colwin could not pull my mind away from my worries.

  Finally, a surgeon appeared and asked us to follow her into a small room off the lobby. There, she introduced herself as Dr. Chen. She and her team had removed a blood vessel from Adam’s left leg, she said, and another from his chest wall. They had reattached both grafts from his aorta to arteries beneath the two that were blocked. It was like rerouting traffic after an accident, she explained; if all went as planned, the new arteries would allow his blood to flow freely again.

  “So is he okay?” said Zoe.

  “For now,” said Dr. Chen. “The big risks right now are infection and atrial fibrillation—that’s a condition that causes an irregular heartbeat, which can lead to stroke and other issues. He’s on a breathing tube until at least tomorrow, so he won’t be able to talk. And he needs to rest, so for today, keep your visit brief.”

  The minute she was done, we raced to Adam’s room in the intensive care unit. He was lying on an incline with his chest heavily bandaged; a vent
ilator covered his mouth and nose.

  “Dad,” said Jack softly, and Adam’s eyes shot open.

  Zoe and Jack rushed to the bed and took his hands. He looked at them both, and I realized he was crying.

  This hurts in more ways than one—and let it, I thought as I walked to his bed. At least you’re alive to feel the pain.

  Our eyes locked as I touched Adam’s arm. I had met so few people in life with eyes like his—not hazel or green gray or a murky blue, but clear, bright green. “See? You made it,” I said. “I’m going to give the kids some time with you, but I’ll be back tomorrow to check in. I’m glad you’re okay.” I took his hand and squeezed it lightly. Then I turned and left the room before I could start thinking about what I had lost.

  “Oh, Mags,” said Gita that evening. The kids were spending the night at Adam’s apartment and would meet me back at the hospital in the morning. “You’re a saint for coming back.”

  “Or a martyr,” I remarked.

  “One and the same, no?” Gita stuck her head in the fridge. “What do you want? I have plain and passion-fruit seltzer, grapefruit juice . . .”

  “Seltzer, any flavor,” I called to her.

  She emerged with a can of water in one hand and a bottle of sauvignon blanc in the other. “You don’t mind if I have a pour while I cook, do you?”

  “Of course not.” I eyed the green glass bottle as she uncorked it. Four months had passed since I had had a drink, and much had changed during that time. I no longer had a pang while driving past vineyard-touting billboards on the highway. I instantly declined happy hour specials when I was out to eat, even if sangria was less expensive than a latte. Rather than chardonnay, I now sipped chamomile before bed and was rewarded with the deep sleep of a child. I had kicked my bad habit. At some point, I might be ready to see if I could have a glass of wine without it turning into several. But not when I was stressed the way I was today, and certainly not when the cause of my stress was my ex-husband.

  She looked at me over her shoulder. “You sure?”

  “Positive. But you can pour my sparkling water in a wine glass.”

  Gita did and set my glass in front of me before raising her own. I lifted mine in response. “Here’s to us—”

  “And the ones that we love—”

  “And if the ones that we love don’t love us—”

  “Screw ’em. Here’s to us,” Gita finished and broke into a smile as I brought the edge of my glass to hers. She had taught me this toast twenty-plus years earlier, not long after Adam and I had moved into the neighborhood. A couple that had lived a few doors down, whose names had since gone missing in my mind, had invited us to a barbecue. It had been perfectly pleasant, but I had spent the first hour struggling to make conversation. Enter Gita stage left. She liked to say she took one look at me huddled next to our neighbor’s garage and knew we would be friends, but the truth is, I had spotted her in her flowing yellow dress beside the pool and was already walking toward her when she flagged me down. Like me, Gita was an only child; in each other, we had found the sister we had always wanted.

  “So,” she said. “What does Charlie think about you being here?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think he’s thrilled.” (“Of course, do what you think is right,” he had said when I called him before I left. “I’ll be thinking about you and your family.”) “But we’re not serious, so what he thinks is really beside the point.”

  Gita raised an eyebrow. “Charlie makes you happy, though. I can tell that even over the phone.”

  “Happy and serious aren’t the same thing. In this case, I think us being not serious is why I’m happy.”

  “Okay.”

  I picked up a cashew from the bowl on the counter and threw it at her. She laughed as it hit her shirt. “What was that for?”

  “That was for you being a big fat skeptic.”

  “Maybe I am, but I know you.” She perched herself on a stool, folded her arms, and regarded me. “This past year has been a doozy.”

  Had it already been a full year since Adam had walked out the door on me? It had, I concluded with surprise, even though at times each month had felt like a decade. “Yes, it has.”

  “And yet you’re doing better than ever.”

  “Better?” I scoffed. “I could hand you thirteen articles on why women’s financial status takes a nosedive after divorce, even if their alimony is decent. Everything’s cheaper when it’s split between two people. And don’t get me started on the emotional trauma.” On the car ride from Ann Arbor, Ella Fitzgerald’s “Our Love Is Here to Stay” had come on the radio. It had been the first song Adam and I had danced to at our wedding, and when I heard it again, I had almost collided with the semi in front of me because I could not see through my tears.

  Gita popped a cashew in her mouth. When she was done chewing, she said, “I understand that. At least, I understand that as well as someone who isn’t in your shoes is able to. But Maggie, there’s a light in you that wasn’t there those last years of your marriage to Adam.” She gave me a look that was at once fierce and kind. “Maybe you haven’t noticed it yet, but it’s there. Don’t blow it out before you’ve had a chance to see it.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  When I returned to the hospital the next morning, Zoe and Jack were rolling dice on a laminated tray a few feet from Adam’s bed. Adam, who was tethered to multiple monitors, was fast asleep.

  “Greedy?” I whispered, referring to the game that my mother had taught me, which I had taught them. Zoe nodded, but Jack, who had just thrown down a hand, exclaimed, “A thousand. Taking it!”

  Adam groaned, then opened his eyes. “Oh,” he rasped, his voice bearing the effects of being intubated.

  Jack was sheepish. “Sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “It’s okay. I want to be awake.” His gaze shifted to me. “Maggie. You came back.”

  “Yes.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m glad you’re looking better today.”

  He struggled to look down at himself and grimaced. “I feel like someone ran a lawn mower over my chest. It hurts like hell.”

  I gave him a small smile. “They said the first few days would be pretty awful.”

  “This makes awful sound like a cakewalk. I need more painkillers.”

  Like Rose, Adam acted as if he were allergic to all forms of medicine; if he was requesting it now, he was in a bad way. “Do you want me to see if I can get a nurse?” I asked, and he nodded.

  As I pressed the red call button to page the nurses’ station, Zoe touched Adam’s foot beneath the sheet. “Dad, you up for playing a round? Might be good to distract yourself until the nurse gets here.”

  “We can move up,” said Jack, who was already pulling his plastic chair toward the front of the bed. “Can you roll, Dad?”

  Adam smiled weakly. “I suppose I can try, though you might have to help me with the score. My head’s still fuzzy.”

  Zoe made four new columns on a piece of paper and told Adam to roll the first hand. He didn’t get the six hundred points required to enter the game, so he passed the dice to me. As his fingers met my skin, I didn’t dare look at him; I was too afraid I would begin to feel the stirrings of affection that I had the day before. Instead, I squeezed the melamine cubes for luck, as my mother used to, and tossed them onto the bed, pretending I cared deeply that my lousy hand meant I would stay out of the game until the next round.

  We had been playing a few minutes when a nurse came in. Adam told her his pain had gone from a six to an eight or nine, and she disappeared again. Soon after a doctor came in to check Adam’s vitals and scans, and a nurse anesthetist showed up and added something stronger, as he put it, to the IV drip.

  Within minutes, Adam’s lids fell to half-mast, and the game was abandoned. “It’s so nice to be here with you guys,” he murmured.

  “Dad, you sound cooked,” Jack said.

  “I mean it,” said Adam, slurring slightly. “Love you three.”r />
  I turned toward the window so the kids wouldn’t see the grief that was ripping through me. As a young boy, Jack had once said, “Love you three!” after hearing Adam say, “Love you, too” to me. We had laughed our heads off and adopted it as a family joke, but I had not heard Adam say it in years—maybe because it had stopped being true. Had he said it now because he had finally come to understand what a fool he had been? I found myself wishing it were nothing but a medicated blunder, because I had just begun getting used to life without him.

  “We love you, too, Dad,” said Zoe. “Get some rest. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

  With Adam passed out, the three of us moved our chairs to the foot of the bed and talked quietly for a while. When Zoe and Jack decided to go to the cafeteria for coffee and some food, I told them I would stay behind.

  I watched Adam, whose sleep was fitful; his face kept twisting as though he were running through a field of brambles. With his furrowed brow and pink skin, he looked like the oldest child who had ever been born.

  I must have been staring at him for a while when I found myself thinking of our wedding day. Adam had walked me down the aisle himself, in spite of his mother’s protests and his father’s offer to stand in for the father I had never known. We had conceded on every other point of tradition that they had requested—church, minister, bridal parties, lengthy procession, and lengthier guest list—but on this one, Adam would not budge.

  And so we made our way to the front of the church, two people who were unable to believe their luck at finding the exact right person with whom to spend the rest of forever. Just before the minister began to speak, Adam took my hands in his own and said, so quietly that only I could hear, “Maggie, I promise to be the best husband I can for you.”