If I Had Two Lives

by Abbigail N. Rosewood

  As I washed the dishes, I told her of the soap I used which smelled of lavender and basil. I described the pattern on the plates, elephants entwined in vines of leaves and flowers. And for the white ceramic bowls, I tried to tell her about the color white, like a sun-filled sky, a spirit wishing to be seen. As much as I could, I told her the truth, my truth. She was the first person I’d ever been completely honest with. I promised her that after she was born, I would go to Vietnam. Even though I hadn’t met her, I sensed she was already a sociable child.

  During the last trimester, I got used to having company all the time. Sometimes Lilah would come alone, sometimes Jon would. Often they visited me together. Against my repeated refusals, they brought over baby toys, bottles, and even a bassinet. When Jon began assembling it in the living room, I became frustrated.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Making a crib. We’ll need one.”

  “Why don’t you make it at your place?”

  “We did. We’ll have one over there and one here,” he said.

  I stared at Lilah, pleading with my eyes for her to intervene. She avoided my gaze and continued to sit on the couch with her knees pulled in to her chest, flipping through a magazine.

  “I’m not raising the baby. You two are,” I said.

  Jon smiled as if the idea of having only two parents was extremely humorous. I grabbed the hammer from him.

  “A baby needs its mother’s milk. It’s the healthiest thing for our child. I thought you might want to spend some time with it too.”

  “Well, I don’t,” I said. “I’ll put the milk in bottles and bring them to you.”

  Jon went to the couch and sat down with his arms around Lilah.

  “So you think after you give us the baby, you’ll just avoid us forever?” Lilah said.

  “No—” I said.

  “So you’ll be in our life and act as if you’re like any other friends of ours with no relationship to the baby whatsoever?” she said.

  “We don’t have to tell her anything,” I said.

  “Children ask questions,” Jon said.

  “I’m not going to lie to my kid. You’re the birth mother. What we have—the three of us have—is nothing to hide.” Lilah went back to flipping her magazines. “Jon will stop building the crib if you like. The point is we can share some of the responsibility if you want to. I know you do.”

  Inwardly I was hopeful and grateful for the prospect of spending more time with the baby, but the arrangement worried me. Lilah seemed to resist anything that could be named. She drifted toward ambiguities like an object in perpetual free fall, never touching the ground. Jon and I were figures in the dream she’d created. Who was I outside of her fantasy? There would be no baby, no joy that resembled grief, no sob that sounded like laughter, nothing at all.

  “I don’t want the crib here,” I said.

  They didn’t insist further. Jon gathered the remaining parts and pushed them in the corner of my living room together with the unfinished crib. These minor disagreements between us didn’t bother me. I was glad they happened; glad to have one foot on the deck of a drowning ship. Otherwise, I was too happy to play the role of a member of the family.

  Because it was spring, I sometimes left my front door open for fresh air. My neighbor needed to walk by my door to go upstairs to his apartment. He saw Lilah and Jon but never acknowledged them. One day Jon sensed this and said hello. It was one of his weaknesses—his discomfort at the idea of anyone not liking him. My neighbor glanced at Jon as though he didn’t understand. It was a pretense and also a self-defense tactic all immigrants had taken part in at times to avoid conflict—act as if they didn’t know English. Seeing this, Jon waved his hand dramatically, but my neighbor had already disappeared up the stairwell.

  “What’s with him?” Jon said.

  I shook my head and pretended I didn’t understand the question.

  “Let’s take a vacation,” Lilah said. I wondered if she was unaware of what just happened or simply didn’t think it involved her.

  “What?” Jon said. “It’s not a good time, Lilah.”

  “After the baby is born, we’ll be too busy. The three of us could go to the beach or the mountains. Whatever you want,” she said.

  “I don’t think I should travel.” I touched my round belly, imagining a sweaty hike up hills.

  “It’ll be good for you,” she said to me. “Fresh air, peace and quiet. We’ll get back way before your due date.”

  “Alright,” I said.

  Upon hearing my plan to go with Jon and Lilah to Martha’s Vineyard, my neighbor immediately expressed disapproval.

  “You are too big to travel.” He shook his head.

  “It’s not far. They will drive, but I’m flying there,” I said.

  “You should be looking at colleges. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  I was hurt. “I will after the baby’s born.”

  “They’re paying for a service, for you to give them a child. No matter how much you think they may care about you, they’ll forget about you once they’re busy being parents. They’re not your family,” he said. We were standing under a mini palm tree in his indoor greenhouse. “Focus on the life you actually have.”

  “And be like you?” I said.

  He ignored this remark. “You can work at my firm part time as a paralegal while you go to school. If you want to, you can take the bar exam. I’ll make sure my firm hires you. It’ll take a while, but—”

  “Being a lawyer isn’t going to help me.”

  “No, but it’s a solid position in society. Nobody questions a doctor and a lawyer. All people want is for you to wear a nametag. They’ll leave you alone once they’ve identified what you are. Don’t you want this?”

  I nodded.

  He became quiet. His butterflies had surrounded him. One with crimson red and orange wings perched firmly on his arm as he moved about and watered the plants. They were used to his presence, he was just another tree in the garden. “You can be as disjointed as you like, but it’s important to look predictable if you want society to accept you. The older you get, the less forgiving people will be. Pick up a nametag. Doesn’t matter what it is.”

  On my way to the airport, the baby kicked violently. I cupped my hand over my mouth. The cab driver asked me twice if he should take me to a hospital instead. I shook my head and told him I was going to spend a few days by the sea. Lilah and Jon had opted to take the scenic route instead of flying, so I would get there before them. As soon as I got on the plane, a sharp pain rippled across my stomach. I pressed my teeth together in order not to scream out. I’d heard of women giving birth before their due dates, but I’d hoped my baby would stay inside me as long as possible. I was not ready to let her go.

  As soon as the plane landed, I went to the restroom and vomited. Nothing came up but water, since I’d taken care not to eat that morning. Sweat soaked through the front of my shirt. Immediately I felt better.

  “Your first?” A woman with streaks of gray hair and a youthful face asked me.

  I nodded, smiling.

  “The first one is so special. They all are, but nothing is like the first,” she said.

  “How many kids do you have?” I said.

  “Three. Two of them work in the city. One lives here on the vineyard,” she said. She was radiant with pride. “Good luck to you.”

  As soon as she turned her back, I leaned on the sink and heaved heavily. The tears behind my eyes had dried up and felt like thorns pushing through. My eyes burned but I could not cry. I had nobody but myself to blame.

  The house we stayed at belonged to Jon’s grandfather. The back porch opened up to a morass of bright green. An egret stood against a softly lit sky, diffused by spontaneous sweeping brushes of orange, purple, aquamarine. Two deer trotted on the edge of the mars
hland and disappeared behind the trees. Jon came out to join me on the porch. He handed me a cup of cinnamon tea.

  “I came here every summer as a kid. When I met Lilah in college, I took her here. We come back every summer,” he said.

  Lilah was inside running up and downstairs, grabbing and distributing towels and bed sheets. The house was as familiar to her as it was to Jon. I wondered if as a college girl she had treaded lightly on the wooden floor, careful not to let it register her awkward and confused footsteps. I didn’t know what to do except stand as still as I could and disappear into the picture that surrounded me. Was marriage like this, a continuous folding of memory and longing for the past that every sigh, every breath, a glance over the shoulder only happened once and every attempt thereafter only served to strengthen or dilute the original. Standing next to me, Jon was simultaneously the man of ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years ago. No matter who he was or who he may become, the house would hold him there spellbound, energized by the promise of a new love.

  “Our kid will have this too, just as I did,” he said.

  “It will be a perfect childhood,” I said. I thought only a man who’d had such a happy youth would be able to love so simply, fearlessly.

  I went into one of the bedrooms. Lilah was sleeping on top of the blankets with a book over her face. I lay down next to her, put her hand to my lips. The sunlight coming in through the bedroom windows warmed my closed eyelids. Though I was nearly twenty years late, I still hoped we would share the same dream.

  When I woke, it was half past ten at night. Lilah seemed to just wake as well. She yawned lengthily.

  “That was the best nap.” Her face was rosy.

  “Hm.” I smiled.

  After eating an elaborate dinner Jon had made, clam chowder, seafood risotto, fresh berries and cream, we sat on the couch in the living room with a cool breeze on our back and the sound of mating frogs all around us. We talked only of the future. They asked what I would study if I went back to school. I told them that I wanted to be a journalist and cover the ordinary life of citizens in places assumed to be broken and violent. I realized that I had something resembling a dream only as I said it. I also hoped to find the camp where I grew up though I would need to walk there blindfolded, guided entirely by intuition since I was never told where it was. They said that I should go as far as I wanted and do as much as I was able. They would raise the baby to know me and love my name no matter where I was. I felt they had sensed my panic as the day approached. They assured me that they weren’t afraid of the baby loving someone else beside them. They reminded me of the deer I’d seen from the porch, so remote and unburdened that you didn’t want to get too close so as not to startle them from a beautiful dream. I decided that my neighbor was wrong about them.

  The next day I woke up early and walked alone to the beach. A boy with blond curls ran with the waves, squealing in excitement. His father stood close by, typing on his cellphone. I put down my towel and joined the others who were mesmerized by the rhythm of the sea. The boy’s father acknowledged me right away. We were the only people on the beach unaccompanied by other adults. Soon he came to introduce himself. I knew he’d taken noticed I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “Is your husband with you?” he said.

  “I’m not married,” I told him.

  He looked thoughtful, typed something on his phone, then put it away in his shorts’ pocket.

  “Your son is beautiful. Not just in the way that all children are either,” I said.

  The father tilted his head slightly as if he was observing his son as a person for the first time rather than an extension of himself.

  “He takes after his mother.”

  “Is she not fond of water?” I said.

  “She passed away many years ago.” He sat down next to me. “It was perfect with her here.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy now too,” he said. “The lucky ones get to know that feeling once in their life, the feeling of home. I wanted nothing more than what I had.” He took his phone out of his pocket, looked at the screen. “Sorry, got to take this.” He got up, brushed off the sand and walked away.

  “Want to go for a drive?” Lilah asked.

  “Where’s Jon?” I said.

  “Catching up with his friends. Don’t forget he grew up coming here.”

  “Right, let’s go.”

  Lilah drove us off the main road, down a bumpy and dusty path. Sometimes, she closed her eyes briefly as though she didn’t care where we might end up. I refrained from telling her to pay attention, though I was scared when she kept her eyes close for too long. I looked at our surrounding carefully like I was the person behind the steering wheel and not her. The landscape was featureless, only a few shrubs and mossy boulders. Nausea rolled through me and I yelled at Lilah to stop the car.

  “We’re almost there!” she said, making no attempt to slow down.

  Bitter saliva filled my mouth. “Please stop the car,” I said again, only to feel it pick up speed. I checked the speedometer and swallowed. Fear had temporarily suppressed my nausea. “Slow down,” I begged her. Over the hill, I could begin to make out the shape of a tree. Lilah pressed on the gas pedal and the car shot forward toward the tree trunk.

  “We’re almost there!” Lilah cheered. Moments before we would crash into the tree, I grabbed the steering wheel and hard turned it to the right.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” The car stopped. I stumbled out the passenger seat. “Can’t you hold off your games for one second? I’m fucking pregnant. With your baby!”

  “I’m sorry.” She came toward me, knelt down and hugged my stomach. “I wasn’t going to let anything hurt you. I just wanted to feel close to her, for you to feel close to her too.”

  “Who?” I unclasped her arms around my body, not wanting her to discover how fast my heart was beating.

  “My daughter—the baby—we buried her here.” She stood up and walked to the other side of the tree. I followed. There was no marker of a grave, just damp grass and a few wild flowers. The smell of wood rot. I noticed for the first time that Lilah was barefoot, her heels smeared with mud. “I’m really sorry. This is how I’ve always driven here—those last few minutes of near-death. It makes me feel like I have a choice to be with her. Like I could, if I really wanted to.”

  “You’ll just have to wait, Lilah,” I said, not withholding the sarcasm in my voice and turned to begin my walk back. I didn’t want to get in the car again.

  “Hey,” she called. “Doesn’t it feel good though?” The sun had begun to set, saturating half of Lilah’s face with its liquid gold.

  “What could possibly feel good about what just happened?”

  “Now you know how much you wanted to live.”

  I didn’t answer her, didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being right. The walk was long, but I was glad of it, glad of the dry weeds pricking at my ankles, of the sweat on my neck. I cradled the underside of my belly, glad too of the life inside me.

  The weekend trip with Lilah and Jon had energized me. As soon as I got home, I searched online for information about academic programs. At first I was overwhelmed by the amount of specialties, concentrations I didn’t know existed. After reading further, I became excited by the different possibilities. I asked myself if it would be better to study journalism or another subject in order to be the kind of journalist I wanted to be. Perhaps it would be more crippling than helpful to become adept in the history of journalism and the rules of news writing that provided concise and impartial information yet left the readers so unengaged and bored that they’d be pulled into the latest celebrity gossip. I thought political science and public policy would give me a better understanding of the system I was a part of and how to work with it while still carving my own path.

  Over the next few day
s, I moved only between the library and my apartment, forgetting about the world. Almost a week had passed. I realized I hadn’t talked to either Lilah or Jon since we said our goodbye at the vineyard. They’d dropped me off at the airport and drove back to the city shortly after. I called Lilah to tell her I’d started my college application but she didn’t pick up. Then I tried Jon’s number. The phone rang a few times when a strange female voice answered. I introduced myself and asked to speak to Jon.

  “Oh . . . it’s you. I’m sorry we haven’t talked before. I’m Jon’s mother,” her voice was warm. “I was just going to call you. It’s just been—I’m in New York for a few more days. Can we meet?”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Where are you? I’ll come to you.”

  I looked around my apartment, the unfinished crib, the plastic bags full of baby products I hadn’t taken out because I’d planned to return them to Jon, spider webs that had thickened during my absence. I told her I would meet her at Jon and Lilah’s place instead.

  “That’s fine. I’m already here,” she said.

  When I got there, I noticed another car parked in Jon’s usual spot. It wasn’t out of the ordinary that he might have parked somewhere else, so I looked down the street to see if his car was in sight. Everything else about the front of their house looked the same, an empty bottle of iced tea on the lawn, young daffodils starting to bloom.

  His mother opened the door. Her blond hair, despite her age, was thick and glossy. She had it loosely pulled back in a low bun. Her cheeks were smooth, her teeth looked white and strong. The small wrinkles under her eyes were the only betrayal of her age. Jon had inherited much from her. I realized I’d not spoken since she greeted me nor opened my arms when she hugged me. I was looking at the shoe rack inside the living room for Lilah’s black boots, the only thing I’d seen her wear. They weren’t there.