Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  Gabby says it’s beautiful at night. There is a light installation that shines brightly in the dark. She wants to show me.

  We stop at Coffee Bean and get tea lattes. Mine is herbal because Gabby read an article that said pregnant women shouldn’t have any caffeine. There are about ten others that say caffeine is fine in moderation but Gabby is very persuasive.

  We park the car a few blocks from the museum, put Charlemagne on the sidewalk, and start walking. The air is cool; the sun set early tonight, and it’s quiet on the streets of L.A., even for a Sunday night.

  Gabby doesn’t want to talk about Mark, and I don’t really want to talk about the baby. Lately, it seems as if all we do is talk about Mark and the baby. So we decide instead to talk about high school.

  “Freshman year, you had a crush on Will Underwood,” Gabby says. She sips her drink right after she says it, and I look at her to see her eyes giving a mischievous glance. It’s true, I did have a crush on Will Underwood. But she also knows that just mentioning it is enough to make me mortified. During our freshman year, Will Underwood was a senior who was completely cheesy and dated freshman girls. When you are a freshman girl, you don’t understand what’s so unlikable about guys who are interested in freshman girls. Instead, I very much hoped he’d notice me. I wanted to be one of those girls. He’s now a shock jock on an FM station here. He dates strippers.

  “Well, I’ve never had good taste,” I say, laughing at myself, and then I point at my belly. “As evidenced here by my baby with no daddy.”

  Gabby laughs. “Ethan was a good one,” she says. “You were smart enough to choose Ethan.”

  “Twice,” I remind her as we keep walking. Charlemagne pulls on the leash, leading us toward a tree. We stop.

  “Well, I’m no better at choosing, clearly,” Gabby says, and it occurs to me that when you’re going through a divorce or when you’re having a baby, there is no not talking about it. It shades everything you do. You have to talk about it, even when you aren’t talking about it. And maybe that’s OK. Maybe what’s important is that you have someone to listen.

  Charlemagne pees beside the tree and then starts scratching away at the grass, trying to cover it up. This is a pet peeve of Gabby’s, because Gabby appreciates a nicely landscaped curb.

  “Charlemagne, no,” Gabby says. Charlemagne stops and looks up at her, hoping to please. “Good girl,” Gabby says, and then she looks at me. “She’s so smart. Did you think dogs were this smart?”

  I laugh at her. “She’s not that smart,” I tell her. “Earlier today, she ran into the wall. You just love her, so you think she’s smart. Rose-colored glasses and what have you.”

  Gabby cocks her head to the side and looks at Charlemagne. “No,” she says. “She’s really smart. I just know it. I can tell. I mean, yes, I do love her. I love her to pieces. I honestly don’t know what I was doing without a dog this whole time. Mark ruined all the good stuff.”

  Obviously, Mark didn’t actually ruin every good thing in the world, but I don’t contradict her. Anger is a part of healing. “Yeah,” I say. “Well, actually, you did have good taste in men once. Remember how in love you were with Jesse Flint all through high school? And then senior year? You guys went out on the one date?”

  “Oh, my God!” Gabby says. “Jesse Flint! I could never forget Jesse Flint! He was an actual dream man. I still think he’s the most handsome guy I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  I laugh at her. “Oh, come on! He was tiny. I don’t even know if he was taller than you.”

  She nods. “Oh, yes, he was. He was one inch taller than me and perfect. And then stupid Jessica Campos got back together with him the day after our date, and they ended up getting married after college. The major tragedy of my young life.”

  “You should call him,” I say.

  “Call Jesse Flint? And say what? ‘Hey, Jesse, my marriage is over, and I remember one nice date with you when we were seventeen. How’s Jessica?’ ”

  “They got divorced, like, two years ago.”

  “What?” Gabby says. She stops in place. “No more Jesse and Jessica? Why did I not know about this?”

  “I assumed you did. It was on Facebook.”

  “He’s divorced?”

  “Yeah, so maybe you two can talk about what divorce is like or something.”

  She starts walking again. Charlemagne and I walk with her. “You know something embarrassing?”

  “What?”

  “I thought about Jesse on my wedding day. How lame is that? As I was walking down the aisle, I specifically thought, Jesse Flint is already married. So he isn’t the one you were meant to be with. It made me feel better about my decision. I think I figured, you know, Mark really was the best one out there for me that was available.”

  I can’t help it. I start laughing. “It’s like you really wanted to get Count Chocula, but someone took the last box, and all they had was Cheerios, so you told yourself, ‘OK, Cheerios is what I was meant to have.’ ”

  “Mark is totally Cheerios,” Gabby says. But she doesn’t say it as if she’s in on the joke. She says it as if it’s a Zen riddle that has blown her mind. “Not Honey Nut, either. Straight-up, heart-healthy Cheerios.”

  “OK,” I tell her. “So one day, when you’re ready, probably a bit far off into the future, you call Count Chocula.”

  “Just like that?” she asks.

  “Yep,” I say. “Just like that.”

  “Just like that,” she says back to me.

  We walk for a little while, and then she points to a series of lights shining in long rows.

  “That’s the Urban Light installation I was telling you about,” she says.

  We walk closer to it and stop just in front of it, across the street. I have a wide view.

  It’s made up of old-fashioned streetlights, the kind that look as if they belong on a studio lot. The lights are beautiful, all clustered together in rows and columns. I’m not sure I understand the meaning behind it, exactly. I don’t know if I get the artist’s intention. But it is certainly striking. And I’m learning not to read too much into good things. I’m learning just to appreciate the good while you have it in your sights. Not to worry so much about what it all means and what will happen next.

  “What do you think?” Gabby asks me. “It’s pretty, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I like it. There’s something very hopeful about it.”

  And then, as quickly as we came, we turn around and walk back toward the car.

  “You’re going to find someone great one day,” I say to Gabby. “I just have this feeling. Like we’re headed in a good direction.”

  “Yeah?” she says. “I mean, all signs sort of point otherwise.”

  I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I think everything is happening exactly as it’s supposed to.”

  It’s early in the morning, and Gabby and I have been lying on the floor all night. The sun is starting to break through the clouds, into the windows, and straight onto my eyes. It gets bright so early now.

  “Are you awake?” I whisper. If she’s sleeping, I want her to sleep. If she’s awake, I need her to help me get up and pee.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t think I slept all night.”

  “You could have woken me up,” I tell her. “I would have stayed up with you.”

  “I know,” she says. “I know you would have.”

  I turn my head toward her and then push my torso up using my arms, so I’m sitting down. My body feels tight, tighter than it ever felt in the hospital.

  “I have to pee,” I tell her.

  “OK,” she says, getting up slowly. It’s clumsy, but she’s up. I can see now that her eyes are red, her cheeks are splotchy, her skin looks sallow and yellow. She’s not doing well. I suppose that’s to be expected.

  “If you can get me up and bring me my walker, I can do it,” I tell her. “I want to do it on my own.”

  “OK,” she says. She gets the walker from where we le
ft it by the front door yesterday. She unfolds it and locks it into place. She puts it in front of me. And then she puts her arms under mine and lifts me. It’s sounds so simple, standing up. But it’s incredibly hard. Gabby bears almost my entire weight. It can’t be easy for her. She’s so much tinier than I am. But she manages to do it. She leans me on my walker and then lets go. Now I’m standing on my own, thanks to her.

  “OK,” I say. “I’ll just be anywhere from three to sixty minutes. Depending on whether I manage to fall into the toilet.”

  She tries to laugh, but her heart isn’t in it. I move myself slowly, step by step, in the right direction. “You’re sure you don’t want help?” she asks.

  I don’t even turn around. “I got it,” I tell her. “You just take care of you.”

  It feels as if the bathroom is a million miles away, but I get there, one tiny, tentative step at a time.

  When I get back to the living room, I’m feeling cold, so I shuffle over to my things that Gabby brought home from the hospital. I rummage through the bag, looking for my sweatshirt. When I finally see it and pull it out, an envelope drops to the floor. The front simply says “Hannah.” I don’t recognize the handwriting, but I know who it’s from.

  Hannah,

  I’m sorry I had to trade your care to another nurse. I can’t keep treating you. I enjoy your company too much. And my coworkers are starting to take notice.

  I’m sure you know this, but it’s highly unprofessional of any of us on the nursing staff to have a personal relationship with a patient, no matter the scope. I’m not allowed to exchange any personal contact information with you. I’m not allowed to try to contact you after you leave the hospital. If we were to run into each other on the street, I’m not even supposed to say hello to you unless you say hello first. I could be fired.

  I don’t have to tell you how much this job, this work, means to me.

  I’ve been thinking about breaking the rules. I’ve been thinking about giving you my number. Or asking for yours. But I care too much about my work to compromise it by doing something I’ve sworn not to do.

  All of this is to say that I wish we had met under different circumstances.

  Maybe one day we will end up at the same place at the same time. Maybe we’ll meet again when you aren’t my patient and I’m not your nurse. When we are just two people.

  If we do, I really hope you say hello. So that I can say hello back and then ask you out on a date.

  Warmly,

  Henry

  “He left me the house,” I hear from the couch. I tuck the letter away in my bag and turn to see Gabby crying, looking at the coffee table. She has the deed to the house in her hands.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “His parents paid for the down payment. A lot of his own money went into the mortgage.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He feels bad,” she says. “He knows what he’s doing is screwed up, and he’s still doing it. That’s what’s so strange about this. That’s not like him.”

  I set the walker in front of the couch and slowly let myself down. I really hope we aren’t moving from this couch anytime soon, because I think that’s all the energy I have for a while.

  Gabby looks at me. “He must really love her.”

  I look at her and frown. I put my hand on her back. “It doesn’t justify what he did,” I tell her. “His timing, his selfishness.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “He did everything he could except stay.”

  I hold her hand.

  “Maybe he just has a feeling about her,” Gabby says, echoing my sentiments from yesterday morning. Although, I’ll tell you, it feels like a decade ago. “Maybe he can just tell.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.

  “I was never sure he was the one. Even when you asked me the other day, I could sort of feel myself sugarcoating what I really thought. I just thought Mark was a smart decision. We’d been together for a long time, and I just figured that’s what you do. But I never had the moment when I just knew. You,” she says to me, “have that feeling.”

  I dismiss her. “I’ve had that feeling before, though. For a long time, I had that feeling about Ethan. Now I have it about Henry. I mean, maybe it doesn’t count, if you have it for more than one person.”

  “But I never had it. About him. He never had it about me. And maybe he has it now. It makes me feel a little better,” she says. “To think that he left me because he met the one.”

  “Why does that make you feel better?” I cannot possibly conceive of how that could make her feel better.

  “Because if I’m not his soul mate, then that means he’s not mine. There’s someone else out there for me. If he found his, maybe I’ll find my own.”

  “And that makes you feel better?”

  She holds her index finger and thumb together to form the smallest gap. “Ever so slightly,” she says. “So much it’s almost nonexistent.”

  “Invisible to the naked eye,” I add.

  “But it’s there.”

  I rub her back some more as she digests all of this.

  “You know who I thought of yesterday? When you were talking about that feeling? The only one I think I might have felt that with?”

  “Who?”

  “Jesse Flint.”

  “From high school?”

  She nods. “Yeah,” she says. “He ended up marrying that girl Jessica Campos. But I—I don’t know, until then, I always figured we would have something.”

  “They got divorced,” I tell her. “A few years ago, I think. I saw it on Facebook.”

  “Well, there you go,” she says. “Just that little piece of information gives me hope that there’s somebody out there who makes me feel the way Henry makes you feel.”

  I smile at her. “I can promise you, there is someone better out there. I’d write it in stone.”

  “You have to find Henry,” she says. “Don’t you think? How do we do it? How are you going to find Henry?”

  I tell her about the letter and then I shrug. “I might not find him,” I say. “And that’s OK. If you’d told me a month ago that I was going to get hit by a car and Mark was going to leave you, you’d never have been able to convince me that things would be OK. But I got hit by a car, and Mark left you, and . . . we’re still standing. Well, you can stand. I’m sitting. But we’re still alive. Right? We’re still OK.”

  “I mean, things are pretty crappy, Hannah,” she says.

  “But they are OK, aren’t they? Aren’t we OK? Don’t we both still have hope for the future?”

  “Yeah.” She nods somberly. “We do.”

  “So I’m not going to go around worrying too much,” I tell her. “I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them. In time. The future is so incredibly unpredictable that trying to plan for it is like studying for a test you’ll never take. I’m OK in this moment. To be with you. Here. In Los Angeles. If we’re both quiet, we can hear birds chirping outside. If we take a moment, we can smell the onions from the Mexican place on the corner. This moment, we’re OK. So I’m just going to focus on what I want and need right now and trust that the future will take care of itself.”

  “So what is it, then?” Gabby asks.

  “What is what?”

  “What is it you want out of life right now?”

  I look at her and smile. “A cinnamon roll.”

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  I am now firmly in my second trimester. I’ve gained enough weight that I look big but not enough that it’s clear I’m pregnant. I’m just big enough to look like I have a beer belly. I’m sure I’ll be complaining when I’m the size of a house, but I’m inclined to think this part is worse, at least for my ego. Some days, I feel good. Other days, I have a backache and eat three
sandwiches for lunch. I’m convinced that I have a double chin. Gabby says I don’t, but I do. I can see it when I look in the mirror. There’s my chin and then a second chin right there below the first one.

  Gabby comes to a lot of my doctor’s appointments and birthing classes. Not all of them but most of them. She has also been reading the books with me and talking things through. Will I have a natural birth? Will I use cloth diapers? (My instinct tells me no and no.) It’s nice to have someone in my corner. It makes me more confident that I can do this.

  And I am finally finding my confidence. Sure, this is all very scary, and sometimes I want to crawl under the blankets and never come out. But I’m a woman who has been desperately looking for purpose and family, and I found both. Never has it been more clear to me that I have family around me in unconventional places, that I have always had more purpose than I have ever known.

  I no longer feel a rush to leave this city and head for greener pastures, because there are no greener pastures and there is no better city. I am grounded here. I have a support system here. I have someone who needs me to put down roots and pick a place.

  My parents were disappointed to learn that I wasn’t going to join them in London, but the moment they resigned themselves to my decision, they suggested that the two of them and Sarah come out to L.A. when the baby is born. They are going to come and visit me. Us.

  I just started working at Carl’s office, and it has been both hugely stabilizing and really eye-opening. I see mothers and fathers every day who are in our office because they have a sick kid or a new baby or they are worried about one thing or another. You see how deeply these parents love their children, how much they would do for them, how far they are willing to go to make them happy, to keep them healthy. It’s really made me think about what’s important to me, what I’d be willing to lose everything for, not just as a friend or as a parent but also as a person.

  I’m enjoying it so much that I’m thinking about working in a pediatrician’s office long-term. Obviously, this is all very new, but I can’t remember the last time a job made me this excited. I like working with kids and parents. I like helping people through things that might be scary or new or nerve-racking.