Where I Live Now

by Lucia Berlin

  “There is enough there to have put me away for a long time,” I said.

  “I told you not to leave him. What am I going to do now?”

  “Call the police,” I said, and he slapped me again. This one I didn’t even feel. I got a strong contraction. Braxton-Hicks, I thought to myself. Whoever was Braxton-Hicks? I sat there, sweating, stinking of Juarez and watched him pour the contents of the rubber into a film canister. He shook some onto the cottons in his spoon. I knew with a sick certainty that always if there were a choice between me and the boys or drugs, he’d go for the drugs.

  Hot water gushed down my legs onto the carpet. “Noodles! My water is breaking! I have to go to the hospital.” But by then he had fixed. The spoon made a clink onto the table, his rubber tube fell from his arm. He leaned back against the pillow. “At least it’s good shit,” he whispered. I got another contraction. Strong. I tore off the filthy dress and sponged myself, put on a white huipil. Another contraction. I called 911. Noodles had nodded out. Should I leave him a note? Maybe he’d call the hospital when he woke. No. He would not think of me at all.

  First thing he’d do, he’d shoot up what was left in the cottons, have another little taste. I tasted copper in my mouth. I slapped his face but he didn’t move.

  I opened the can of heroin, holding it with a Kleenex. I poured a large amount into the spoon. I added a little water, then closed his beautiful hand around the can. There was another bad contraction. Blood and mucus were sliding down my legs. I put a sweater on, got my Medi-cal card and went outside to wait for the ambulance.

  They took me straight to the delivery room. “The baby’s coming!” I said. The nurse took my medical card, asked questions, phone, husband’s name, how many live births, what was my due date.

  She examined me. “You’re totally dilated, the head is right here.”

  Pains were coming one after another. She ran to get a doctor. While she was gone the baby was born, a little girl. Carmen. I leaned down and picked her up. I laid her, warm and steaming, on my stomach. We were alone in the quiet room. Then they came and wheeled us careening into the big lights. Somebody cut the cord and I heard the baby cry. An even worse pain as the placenta came out and then they were putting a mask over my face. “What are you doing? She is born!”

  “The doctor is coming. You need an episiotomy.” They tied my hands down.

  “Where is my baby? Where is she?” The nurse left the room. I was strapped to the sides of the bed. A doctor came in. “Please untie me.” He did and was so gentle I became frightened. “What is it?”

  “She was born too early,” he said, “weighed only a few pounds. She didn’t live. I’m sorry.” He patted my arm, awkwardly, like patting a pillow. He was looking at my chart. “Is this your home number? Shall I call your husband?”

  “No,” I said. “Nobody’s home.”

  Romance

  after Chekhov

  Snowflakes fell as Morris and Sylvia kissed on the steps. He unlocked the two locks to the entrance of his Riverside Drive apartment. They went inside, shaking themselves like wet dogs, laughing, kissing again on each landing as they climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Two more locks then and at last they were inside and naked and making love on the slippery rug inside the door.

  “Don’t leave. I can’t bear for you to leave again,” Morris whispered. She nodded into his hairy chest.

  “There’s such little time. It hurts too much to say goodbye.” She was crying, but then she smiled.

  “My ear is full of tears!”

  He kissed her ear, licking the salty tears. “My darling!” he said. “When you live with me you’ll never have tears in your ears. I swear.”

  Don’t laugh. This is how people talk when they are in love. Morris and Sylvia were very much in love.

  Morris was a professor at NYU. Sylvia was a speech therapist in San Francisco. Each of them was divorced, each had an eight-year-old child. Morris had a son, Seth, and Sylvia a daughter, Sarah. Each of them had an ex-spouse who had joint custody of the child. Neither ex-spouse would allow their child to leave the state. You could call it a Nineties kind of romance. Back in the Sixties people got divorced, the mother got the children, never got the child support and never heard from the father again. People are better parents now. Morris and Sylvia were good parents. Neither of them, no matter how much they loved the other, would do anything to upset their children, and would never consider leaving them.

  It was painful because they missed each other badly, because it was so wonderful when they were together. They belonged with each other and that was that. All their money was spent on cross-country plane tickets, and on daily phone calls.

  Morris’s sister, Shirley, and Sylvia’s best friend, Cassandra tried to talk the lovers into breaking up.

  “Morris, you know I think she is marvelous,” his sister said. “Absolutely stunning, too.”

  Cassandra said, “Sylvia, you know I adore him.”

  “But,” they both said, “it’s simply not going to work. End it and get on with your life. You’ll meet someone here, who will love you just as much. Maybe have more money. Anybody would adore your child, and you, of course. Get your life back to normal and stop this constant longing and suffering.”

  “No,” Morris said to his sister. “There is no one in this world I could love more than Sylvia. She is the most beautiful, intelligent woman I’ve ever known. She’s brave, she’s witty. She’s so strong. Why, she’s a…pioneer!”

  “No,” Sylvia said to Cassandra. “There is no other man as wonderful as Morris. He is intact and self-confident. He is brilliant, talented. He listens to me and talks to me. He’s a…Why, he’s my hero.”

  Indeed as the affair stretched into a second year the two seemed more in love than ever. They had long conversations every night about their children’s problems and successes, about politics and books and movies and life. They gossiped about family and friends. They spoke about their passion and longing, which only increased as time went by.

  During each of their five or six visits a year they never lapsed into comfortable silences as people do once the honeymoon is over. There was so little time. Five days, a week. They had too many places to go, friends each wanted the other to meet. They had a million things to talk about. They either agreed or disagreed completely. Even disagreeing was wonderful as they both loved to fight. And sex. They couldn’t get enough of each other. Between talking and making love, neither slept more than three hours a night.

  Morris still lay on top of her on the thin rug. There was a draft from under the door and the floor was cold. They would go take a long hot shower, where they were bound to make love again. He laughed, “I’m still holding onto the keys.”

  Sylvia sighed. “You know what I wish? I wish I had keys to your apartment. Can I have my own keys?”

  “That’s silly. I’m always here when you are. I don’t want you out of my sight for a minute. Why would you want keys? God. I have a hundred keys. I’d like to throw all mine away.”

  “Because then at home I could look at them and they’d be the keys to your place in New York. I’d feel connected, committed. I don’t know why but it would make our relationship seem less…precarious.”

  “Our relationship is not precarious. It is the one thing in my life I am totally sure of,” he said, solemnly.

  The next few days he had the care of Seth. The three of them had fun. They went to the planetarium and the Bronx Zoo, rode the tour boat around Manhattan. Seth and Sylvia were comfortable friends by now. They all played Parcheesi and Monopoly, watched The Black Stallion. When he left, Seth hugged Sylvia warmly. “Come back soon, Tiger Lily.”

  “Tiger Lily?” she asked.

  “I heard my Dad call you that on the phone.”

  “That’s true. It was once when he sent me a bouquet of tiger lilies.”

  “Oh, God,” Morris said later. “I hate the thought of him telling her that I called you ‘Tiger Lily.’ Or that I sent you f
lowers. I never sent anyone flowers until I met you.”

  “Really. How terrible. You poor thing.”

  “I suppose men have always sent you flowers, all your life.”

  “Yes,” she smiled, not really lying.

  The last day was always the worst. They would commiserate about all the work they had to make up. The classes he had missed, the appointments she had canceled. He had to have a serious talk with his publisher, she had an important conference the next afternoon at four, then pick up Sarah.

  “Let me help you,” she said. “Or, no, you work…I’ll read the paper. Come on, let’s get up and you get to work.”

  “No. Don’t move. I don’t ever want to let you out of my arms.” He kissed her throat. She moaned.

  That night they had dinner in a Thai restaurant. They didn’t get a cab home but walked uptown for miles in the clear cold night, their footsteps crunching in unison on fresh snow. Her hand held his inside his pocket.

  When they got to the door he started to open the locks.

  “Wait,” he said. He fished inside his jacket, handed her a set of keys.

  “These are your keys. Go on, you open the door.”

  “Oh, thanks! You dear!” she cried. Her heart was filled with tenderness for him.

  They woke at six, exhausted and cold and sore and sad. He made coffee while she showered and packed. She had insisted that he not go with her to the airport. He had work to do, besides it was too painful. She would take a cab. He gave her forty dollars.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I haven’t a cent. Thank heavens Cassandra is meeting me.”

  They had a bagel and orange juice while they waited for the taxi. They ate in silence; they were miserable. They both wished the cab would hurry. It was that awful period after you have said “goodbye” and “I love you” a hundred times and now wanted it over with.

  Morris took her bags downstairs and handed them to the driver, a smiling swarthy man in a red turban. Morris was still in his bathrobe so he blew her a kiss from the doorway.

  Once in the cab Sylvia was crying so hard she didn’t notice the traffic or where they were going. She couldn’t understand, and didn’t care, what the driver was saying to her. She was very unhappy. She looked in her purse for more Kleenex, felt the keys Morris had given her and began weeping freshly.

  When the cab had driven out of sight Morris leaned his head against the cold frosted glass of the door. “Goodbye, my sweet sweet Sylvia,” he said.

  He turned and ran, panting, up the three flights of stairs. He showered and dressed, made fresh coffee. He took a mug to his desk, placed a large stack of students’ manuscripts in front of him, sharpened three pencils and began to work. He glanced from time to time at the clock. At nine he could call his publisher, at ten his agent.

  Morris read carefully, chuckling or cursing, writing rapidly in margins in his firm clear hand. But the unread stack was still high when he called the publisher.

  Unexpected bad news. They didn’t like the new proposal, didn’t want to give him an advance. Never mind the advance, he thought, although he minded it a great deal. This would be a fine book, ten times better than his last one. What fools! He had been so sure they would like it. The disappointment felt like a physical blow.

  Morris suddenly was weak with worry. He was very much in debt. Money for Seth’s expenses, credit card debts for plane tickets, phone bills. He was late with the outrageous child support payment. Oh, God.

  He drank some more coffee, had another bagel, this one with apricot jam. He had skipped his office hours yesterday because Sylvia was there, had six appointments this afternoon. Then dinner with Milo. Very pressing things to discuss with Milo about restructuring the department. Where were the notes he had made? Oh, no, I couldn’t have left them at my office. He searched frantically through his briefcase, found the notes and went back to reading the students’ work. He desperately needed a nap. Was he too old for Sylvia?

  The phone rang. Better not answer it. Very wise decision. The nasal whine of his ex-wife Zelda on the answering machine.

  “Morris, dear, I’m sure you’re busy shtupping Ms. Tiger Lily, or perhaps out shopping. Just want to remind you that your son’s tuition and music are both overdue and I need money to feed and clothe him.”

  Ten o’clock. Russell may be in by now. He direct-dialed his agent. “Yes. I’ll hold.” He held, continuing to read and sip coffee.

  When Sylvia came in, Morris was talking loudly, pacing around the apartment with the phone cord trailing after him.

  “…possibly make that kind of concession…no, not at all…it would be counter to the basic premise of the thing. Surely you…” He was listening, then, red-faced, but finally noticed Sylvia and heard her saying, “Morris. Morris!” Frowning, he waved at her to be quiet, turned away and spoke angrily into the phone.

  “I’m counting on you to reason with him. Hey, hold on a minute.” He looked at Sylvia. “What are you doing here?”

  “I missed the plane.”

  “You couldn’t miss the plane.” To the phone he said, “I’ll call you back.”

  “Morris, I need sixty dollars for the taxi.”

  “You can’t need sixty dollars. It’s thirty-five, forty with a tip.”

  “It fifty-five dollar. Five dollar no big tip. Need more tip. Big bags,” said the man in the doorway who looked just like the other cab driver, but it was only because he too wore a red turban.

  “For Christ’s sake.”

  He went to his wallet but there was only forty. Maybe in my jacket. Yes. He paid the driver who said, “This is lousy tip. Wait all this long time.”

  “How in Christ’s sake did you miss the plane? You left two hours early!”

  “Don’t scream at me, Morris. I didn’t do it on purpose. There was a problem on the expressway. The driver got lost in Yonkers…”

  “Great title.”

  “I tried to call you but your phone was busy busy, then I called the wrong number and didn’t even have another quarter to my name. So, foolishly, I came here. I am very lucky that I don’t have to buy another ticket.”

  “So there’ll be another cab ride. A hundred and fifty dollars in one day on taxis! How could it cost you fifty-five dollars to get from the airport?”

  “He didn’t know where Riverside Drive was, that’s why. I cannot believe you can be standing there haggling about money at a time like this. I missed my conference. I won’t be picking up Sarah. He’d love full custody of her. He’ll say this shows how irresponsible I am.”

  “You are irresponsible! You have no concept of money. How can you not have more than a quarter on you?”

  “Because all my money goes on visiting you! And, believe me, Sarah and I don’t go to plays or restaurants like you do. We live simply. In a tenement. I’m dressed in rags!”

  “You have a lovely apartment. And I wouldn’t call Ralph Lauren or Ann Klein rags. Poor little match girl!”

  “Don’t patronize me, you asshole!”

  “I cannot believe you would use such an expression.”

  “Perhaps I have never had the occasion before. Look, what do you suggest I do? I have no money. I can’t get a flight until midnight. Meanwhile I have to call home. Don’t worry. I’ll use my card.”

  Morris caught her hand, pulled her into his arms. “Darling, this is our first fight! Forgive me. I’ve had a lousy morning, have so much work to do…”

  She was sobbing. “I really needed to be at that meeting. And Sarah was upset about me leaving in the first place, and now you act like I’m the last person you want to see.”

  “Don’t cry, please don’t cry. You know what the problem really is? We’re both worn out. How about you go have a bath and a nap. We’ll have a late lunch before I go to my appointments.”

  “Your appointments?”

  “Yes. I have to go. I didn’t go to class or my office for three days. I simply have to go today. And I have to see Milo for dinner.”

  “I see. Ma
y I please use your phone?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  But just then the phone rang. It was Russell, his agent.

  “Oh, hi. Hang on a minute.” Morris took the phone into the bedroom and closed the door. She couldn’t believe it. They had always shared everything. She saw the place with half a bagel and apricot jam. He never ate jam.

  She listened, realized he was off the phone. He was sitting on the edge of the bed as she sat down. She began to dial, not noticing how miserable he was.

  “I’d think you would at least ask about my book,” he said.

  She hung up the phone and thought about it. “What I’m asking myself is why you waited until I left to find out about the book.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because I was afraid it would be bad news, and didn’t want to spoil your visit.”

  “You didn’t want my visit to compete with your life. I’m so foolish. I thought we shared everything. Excuse me. I have calls to make.”

  Morris forced himself to get to work on the student papers. When she had finished calling she came into the room where he was working. She stood, hoping he would turn around but he didn’t.

  Finally, hours later, he finished working and went into the bedroom. She lay on the bed, asleep, covered with his robe. He kissed her cheek, but she didn’t stir.

  When she did wake up he was gone. There was fifty dollars on the desk and a note. “Had to meet with students. Didn’t want to wake you. Back at five. I love you, M.”

  It was snowing. She stared out the window. The phone rang. She let it ring, listened to the messages.

  “Morris, dear. Why don’t you answer my calls? Please, tear yourself away from Ms. Anorexia or Tiger Lily or whomever. I need child support money immediately.” Crash.

  “Hi, darling. It’s Amy. Milo says you two are meeting to revamp. I have ideas too, so I’ll drop by Enrico’s tonight in time for lots of brandy. Ciao.”

  Although he was nearly faint with fatigue, Morris took the stairs three at a time when he got home from school.