by Joni Rodgers
“That’s the first step to building a solid marriage,” Vivica said. “First you have to be strong enough to not need a man. Then you have to be brave enough to go on and need him anyhow.”
“Well, anyway,” Kit maintained a tone that deliberately changed the subject, “that’s all about my doctor’s appointment. Now let’s hear about yours.”
“Oh, let’s not,” Vivica sighed.
“Did you go to your CAT scans?”
“Honestly, you sound just like your sister. She’s practically taken over the agency. Now you think you can boss me around, too?”
Kit could hear Vivica tapping something on her desk.
“Mama?”
“I’m still here, Kitten.”
“What did they say?”
“They said there’s a spot on my lung now.”
“Oh... no.” Kit had to stop loading the dishwasher and sit down on a chair. “So what do they want to do about it?”
“Oh, you know those philistines. They’re just full of ideas. But it’s not a matter of what they want to do.”
“When do you start chemo again?”
“I don’t, Kit. This is enough.”
“What? Mama, you don’t mean that!”
“Yes, I do, Kitty,” Vivica assured her. “I know it’s hard for you and Kiki to understand, and I’ve already heard the whole lecture from her—”
“Well, you’re going to hear it again! We’re not going to let you give up that easy.”
“Easy?” Vivica’s voice wrinkled with irritation. “Kit, you know damn well it’s been anything but easy. I’ve already taken so much chemo and radiation that, when I do die, you’ll have to scatter my ashes over a toxic waste dump! I did what they told me. I fought a good fight. And it was always a positive direction, it always felt like the right thing. Until now. Now it feels like... like swimming against the tide. I think I’m ready to float for a while. Let that tide take me out a ways. I think I’m ready to see what’s out there.”
“No, Mama! Not you! You’re the last person who would ever—”
“What? Give up the great battle? I don’t see it that way, Kitten. I’m not talking about dying. For one thing, every day I stay alive, I’m surviving, not dying. And for another, chemotherapy isn’t the be all and end all of cancer treatment. I’ve already made an appointment with a naturopath, and I’ve been reading all these wonderful books. ‘The bald doctor book club,’ Kiki calls them: Andrew Weil and Bernie Seigel and O. T.
Bonnet. Healing doesn’t happen from bombarding your body with poison, Kit, it happens when something changes inside your soul. And it doesn’t always mean a continuation of the status quo. In fact, I suspect it never means that.”
She paused, giving Kit an opportunity to respond, but Kit couldn’t speak.
“You know what? I’ve decided to become a vegetarian,” Vivica sounded more like her take-charge self again. “It’s a very wellness kind of thing to do. And a great excuse to order lobster.”
“Don’t joke.”
“Who’s joking? At thirty-two dollars a tail, it better be a matter of life and death.”
Vivica laughed for both of them, waiting another long moment for Kit to say something.
“All that alternative stuff, Mama—What if it doesn’t work?”
“Then I’ll die, Kit. And I hope I raised you girls with enough faith in God to know that isn’t a terrible thing. It’s a peaceful thing. A natural thing. ‘No cruelty, but a cup of ambrosia.’ That’s what Alexandra Firestein said.”
“She also said ‘Traditional marriage is the daily rape of womankind.’”
“Did she?” Vivica tsked. “Sometimes I think she should have used a little more fiber in her diet. A bowl of raisin bran, a prune or two. It might have changed history.”
Kit did laugh a little this time, but the sound of it was broken enough to make her mother hush softly, “Shh, Bitty Kitty. No more crying.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Now, don’t start feeling sorry for me,” Vivica reprimanded. “You know I hate that.”
“I’m not feeling sorry for you, Mama. I’m feeling sorry for myself. And Kiki. We need you.”
“Oh, I think you and Kiki are going to be just fine.”
“And what about this baby? She needs you, too, Mama. And Mitzi and Chloe and Coo and Oscar—”
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here now. And I have no immediate plans to go anywhere. Except Mervyn’s. They’re having an amazing sale right now.”
“Oh, Mama. I just... I just wanted everything to be okay.”
“It is, Bitty Kitty. It’s fine. Not exactly what I had planned, but it’s okay.”
Mitzi and Coo burst in the door, hot on the scent of the vanilla ice cream Kit was scooping out for root beer floats.
“Hey, guys,” she called.
“Hey,” said Mel, and he leaned on the inside of the door frame.
“How’s the new place?”
Mel shrugged, but Mitzi was overflowing with enthusiasm.
“Daddy has a pool! With a slide! And there’s a dumpster!”
“And we went and bought bunk beds,” Cooper added, “and I get the top.”
“Sounds great,” Kit said, but Mel shrugged again.
“Thanks for the pillows and blankets and all that,” he said.
“Sure. No problem.”
“So, I’ll see y’all on Friday, I guess.”
“Can Daddy stay for the bedtime treat?” Mitzi tugged on the expansive fabric of her mother’s maternity dress.
“If he wants to.” Kit caught Mel’s hand on the doorknob. “Feel like hanging out for a while?”
“Stay, Dad?” Cooper pleaded. “We could do some more on my airplane model.”
“Sure,” he nodded. “I’ll skip the ice cream, though,” he added toward Kit. “I’m trying to take off a few pounds.”
“Me too!” Kit said, and he laughed and touched the side of her face.
“You look tired. Are you feeling okay?”
“Oh yeah. I’m into that last couple weeks, though. So my feet are like pontoons.” She went back to scooping. “And my back is killing me today. Ever since I got back from the grocery store, I keep getting these incredible muscle spasms.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Well, you could put these on the table.” She handed him the floats for Mitzi and Coo. “And then you could stick around and help me get these wild bandicoots into bed, if you’re not otherwise—you know—busy or whatever.”
“I’m not busy.” He fizzed a root beer open over the sink.
After the floats, a couple games of Go Fish, a story, prayers, and the tuck-in ritual, Mel came back down to the kitchen, opened the last two bottles of root beer, and handed one to Kit.
“Thanks,” she said. “Would you believe this is my fourth bottle today? I started craving it last night. Had to go to the store at eleven-thirty. And it can’t be the canned stuff. This craving is very specific. IBC Root Beer, in the bottle.”
“How’s your back?” he asked, pushing his hand against the small of it.
“It’s okay,” Kit said, but it felt better when she leaned into his hand.
Mel sat at the table, folding towels and T-shirts, and she stood at the counter, matching little socks that all looked the same to him but combined in subtly different pairs for her. She asked him about the new airplanes at the hangar, he asked her about the contract she’d gotten on a window for an Italian restaurant in the mall, and they went on like that for a while.
“So...” He finally leaned his elbows on the table and rolled the root beer bottle between his palms. “You never did say. How’d it go with Poplin last week?”
“Fine.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What was the um... the news?”
“It’s a girl,” Kit loved saying it, “and she’s perfect.”
“I meant—” But then he stopped and peered down the neck of th
e brown bottle. She knew what he meant, and he knew that she knew.
“Well. Congratulations.” He tipped the bottle up to his mouth, and just as it reached his lips, he added acerbically, “Tell Ander I said congratulations.”
“Please, don’t pick a fight with me right now, Mel.”
“I’m not picking a fight. I just—”
“Mel, please. I’m telling you, I don’t have the energy for it.”
Kit piled the clean, folded towels back in the basket and handed it to him, but when he took hold of the rim, she kept her hands there, touching his.
“Please,” she said.
Mel nodded and took the basket from her, but he stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“I need to know, Kit,” he said without looking back. “Is it him?”
“Would you believe me if I said it’s you?”
He shrugged and took the towels upstairs to the linen closet. Kit heard his footsteps creak down the hallway, pausing to look in on Mitzi and Coo before making his way back down.
“I was thinking,” he said as he meandered back to the kitchen, “if you want—I mean just so it would be the same as Mitzi and Cooper—you could give her the last name Prizer. If you like.”
“I would like that, Mel. Thank you.”
He shrugged again, thumbing through a stack of bills from the basket on the hall desk.
“What’s the extra charge on the cable?”
“Disney Channel.”
“I thought you said no premium channels.”
“Some compromises had to be made,” she said.
“Is it really worth it on that dinky little black-and-white thing? I mean, I thought they couldn’t even watch TV on school days, and they’re with me all weekend.”
“Mel, it’s the only way I can get any work done in the evenings. Ander’s going to Sweden for six weeks, and he’s subcontracting all his work to me. Plus I’m going to teach his tole painting classes, plus Christmas coming on—I’m swamped. Which is great. I’m not complaining. I’m trying to earn as much as I can before the baby comes.”
“I told you,” he bristled, “I’m working all the overtime I can get.”
“I know. But the answer isn’t for you to work enough overtime to support two households. The answer is for you to support your household, and I support mine. Then the kids, we support together. You can’t keep working like this, Mel. You need some time to yourself. You need some joy in your life.”
“How can you say that to me?” he asked in amazement.
“I care about you. I want you to be happy.”
“I was happy. I had joy. Until you yanked it all out from under me.”
“You didn’t have joy, Mel. You had comfort. You were in a nice comfy place where you didn’t have to make any extraordinary effort for me, and you didn’t expect me to make any extraordinary effort for you, and it just got easier and easier to let things slide.”
“So that’s your excuse now.”
“I’m not offering any excuses. But I can’t live the rest of my life feeling like a terrible person and trying to make it up to everybody. I can’t be any kind of mother if I sit around wallowing in the past. All I can do is take what I have left and go forward.”
“Well, it’s great that you can shrug off our family so easily.”
“We’re still a family.”
“I’m not talking about that politically correct Mr. Rogers bullshit you dish up for Mitzi and Coo. I’m talking about our family, Kit—you and me together with our kids in one house.”
“I just don’t think that’s a realistic—”
“I told you, I forgive you. Why can’t you believe that?”
“Do you believe it, Mel?”
“Yes! I forgive you! It’s forgotten!”
“But I don’t want to forget! I don’t ever want to forget again. And I don’t want you to forget, either. I want you to hold me to my promises, because I need to know that I can hold you to yours.”
“What do you want me to do here, Kit? What do you want me to say? I keep trying to shovel through all this crap so we can get on with our lives, but nothing I say seems to make you happy.”
“It’s not your job to make me happy.”
“Then what? What the hell do you want from me?”
“You, Mel. Just you. Not some half-assed, sloppy version of you. I want the man Carmen fell in love with, the man I fell in love with. But that’s not the man I was living with those last three years.”
“I can’t believe you’re trying to turn this around so it’s my fault.”
“I’m not. But we’ve come too far to go back to the way things were. Especially now, with the added element of this baby between us.”
“I told you, I’m ready to accept the baby—”
“Accept her? Not love her, like you do Mitzi? It doesn’t matter who her father is, Mel. She needs a daddy.”
“Ah, Christ, I can’t argue with you.” He pushed his chair back and got up from the table. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m sorry. Kit, but I can’t quote any philosophers for you or spout a bunch of sensitive buzzword marriage counselor crap. I can only—all I can do is just—I fix things. Kit. That’s who I am. When stuff gets broke, I fix it, and then I move on.
“But that’s not who I am, Mel. When I make a mistake, I can’t just fix it. I have to incorporate it into the design. Or start all over again. And sometimes that makes for a more beautiful—”
“Oh, spare me the allegory.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying! And I’m saying, I want my family back. I want my home. I don’t want to drag my ass to work every night, feeling like crap because I didn’t get any sleep, and then drag my ass back to a strange, empty apartment every morning, feeling worse and knowing I still won’t get any sleep because I’m... I’m just... too damn sad.”
Mel leaned against the counter, and Kit came over to stroke his hand, soft as the waters at Matagorda.
“Don’t be sad,” she whispered.
She placed his palm on her stomach and let him feel the turbulence inside. Despite everything, he had to smile when he felt the globe, oceans, continents, thunderstorms and all, turning beneath his fingertips.
“C’mon. You can’t be sad,” Kit laughed like Mitzi on the high side of the swing. “We’re gonna have a baby.”
“Just what the world needs,” Mel gruffed. “Another Kitty Smithers.”
He sat down and used his foot to push a chair back for Kit, and then they both sat, taking turns sipping on his root beer.
“The problem is,” he said after a while, “I can’t picture myself building a life with anybody else.”
“Then maybe coming home isn’t what you really want, Mel. Maybe you’re just scared.”
“Maybe.” He studied his thumbs and then asked. “What do you really want?”
“I want the rest of your root beer.”
He pushed it across the table toward her.
“Ah,” she relished, “nectar of the gods.”
“Seriously, Kit.”
“I want...,” she pondered. “I guess I want things like they are now, only... with sex.”
“Okay!” Mel responded instantly, rubbing his hands together for comic effect. “Finally, we agree on something!”
“But right now,” Kit laughed, “I’d settle for somebody to rub my swollen ankles.”
He brought her feet up onto his lap and pulled off her worn-out huarache sandals, and Kit leaned her head back against the wall as he worked her ankles and insteps for a long while.
“Look at you,” he said just as she was beginning to drift off. “Barefoot and pregnant.”
“Look at you ...”
She wriggled her foot down between his legs where it warmed and conformed to the natural configuration of him.
They sat that way, wooden clock ticking on the dining room wall, roses growing outside the bay window. A gecko had come out onto the screen, its tail
curving like a crescent moon, its pale green belly pulsing with life. Beyond the window box, the swing set creaked in the late evening breeze, waiting, resting itself in preparation for morning.
“I’m not scared,” he said quietly. “I want to have a life with you.”
“Mel, I don’t think—”
“How do I fix this, Kit? Tell me. What do I have to do?” Kit made a conscious decision to let the tide take her, to feel herself float awhile, and see what was out there. She gathered her courage in a space just behind her heart and let herself go, like stepping off a ledge.
“You have to kiss me,” she told him. “Fifteen seconds a day. And you have to let me do the rest myself.”
Mel leaned forward, fulfilled his promise for that day, and then started stockpiling for the next several months. He kissed her cheeks and chin and mouth and neck, and she kissed him back without waiting for script or stage directions.
They tried to hold each other sideways on their chairs, but after a while, that wasn’t working, so they stood up and tried to come together that way, which was still not ideal, what with the difference in height and both their big stomachs in the way, but they both did what they had to in order to adjust.
Mel lifted her onto the kitchen table, and Kit leaned back, resting her head on the quilted toaster cozy, wrangling her dress up so he could stroke and suckle and taste the colostrum at her breast. He rubbed his rough cheek against her enormous midsection and dragged her plain cotton panties out from under her. When he saw that Dr. Poplin’s nurse had shaven her clean in preparation for the delivery, he groaned and kissed her there as if it were her open mouth. He kissed her thighs and fingers and the inside of her knees, kissed her ankles and calves and her wrists and ribs.
He stood and pulled her hips to the edge of the table, cuddling and nudging his way inside her, moaning, “Oh, Kit and “I love you. Kit...” and “God, I’ve missed you so bad...”
Kit watched his reflection in the patio door, pants dropped down around his ankles, shirttail not quite covering his pale backside. He was moving his hands in circles over her stomach, rocking back and forth, bumping into her, swaying her swollen breasts up and down on her chest like tub toys bobbing on water. Mel caught her eye in the glass, and the way she squeezed him inside when she laughed made him moan and rock faster.