Coming Back to Me

by Caroline Leavitt

  There was that silence again. Gary was suddenly furious. He didn’t want to be doing this in the first place, and she wasn’t helping him. Why wasn’t she asking a million questions? Why wasn’t she asking what was wrong with Molly or if she was going to be okay? “She had a baby.”

  “A baby,” Suzanne said flatly. “So how come she’s sick?”

  “Her blood’s not clotting. She’s comatose.”

  He could hear Suzanne’s breathing now. Harder. Sharper. But still, she wasn’t saying anything.

  “I know things haven’t been right between you two,” Gary said, “and I wouldn’t call if I had any other options. I’m at my wit’s end. I need someone to watch the baby so I can be at the hospital. Look, I’ll fly you in. I’ll pay for you to come here. You won’t have to spend a dime the whole time you’re here.” He felt the panic rising in his voice. “Please.” He was begging now. “I’ll do anything. Please.”

  She was quiet again. “Please,” Gary repeated.

  “Wire me the money,” Suzanne said abruptly. “And I’ll come.”

  He hung up the phone. His heart was beating so fast he stood up and then sat down again. Suzanne would come.

  He waited until the next evening to tell Gerta. Gerta had finished putting Otis to bed. She was scrubbing bottles in the sink before boiling them. “Gerta?”

  She kept washing the bottles. “Yes, I can hear you.”

  “I’m not going to be needing you after this week.”

  She shut the water off and turned to him. Her hands were dripping and she wiped them off along the sides of her uniform.

  “I’m not doing a good job with Otis?”

  For the first time that Gary could remember, Gerta looked vulnerable. Her lashes flickered, her mouth twitched at one corner. “You’re doing a wonderful job. Otis loves you.”

  “But you don’t like me? You’d prefer someone else?”

  “No, it’s not that—” he said, and then realizing what that sounded like, shook his head again. He tried to clear his throat and felt something stick in it.

  “It’s money. I don’t have any to pay you,” he said finally. “I haven’t worked. I don’t have vacation or sick days. The bills are piling up. I don’t know what to do.”

  Gerta blinked and stayed silent.

  “I don’t have money coming in,” Gary said.

  “Who will care for Otis?”

  “My wife’s sister. I’m flying her in. She’s coming in two days.”

  Gerta’s shoulders untensed. Her spine lengthened “Ah, family,” she said, nodding, as if that explained everything. “That’s all right then.”

  “Am I leaving you in the lurch?”

  Gerta straightened. “I’m always in demand. The agency will have something for me.”

  By the next afternoon, Gerta already had a new job. “Twin baby boys,” she exulted. “I start in two weeks, so I can have some time at home with my husband.”

  “You’ll stay until Friday, when Suzanne arrives?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Gary watched her. Now that she was leaving, she slowly, slowly began to disengage. She stopped washing Otis’s toys every night. She grew laxer about scrubbing his bottles. Even her voice, when she talked to Otis, was more distant. “I expect great things from you,” Gerta told Otis.

  That night, when he was upstairs at his computer, he heard her feet on the stairs. She appeared at his door, a little out of breath. “Otis needs to be fed soon. You should make up his bottles.” She leaned against the doorjamb. “It’s better to keep Otis with what he is used to.”

  She stood over him, watching, scolding him when he didn’t leave the bottle in the warm water for the full seven minutes. She monitored the way he held his son, she adjusted his grip, and when he was finished, she told him she was leaving him her notebooks. “Everything you need to know is in there,” she said. “When to feed him, when to get him to sleep, I wrote down all my trade secrets.”

  The Friday Suzanne was due to arrive, Gary left the hospital at five. In the car on the way home, Diana Ross wailed about her Love Child. If Gary had a time he liked the least, it would be driving home from the hospital. It was always the hardest because then he felt himself to be in a kind of limbo, neither with his wife nor with his son. The car didn’t handle right. He had never been in an accident in his life, but now the wheels skidded, the steering wheel felt jerky. Gary clicked on the radio. “Because you care—” a voice, deep and sonorous, intoned, “1-800-REST IN PEACE.” Gary snapped to another station.

  Gary pulled into the drive. He fit the key in the lock and opened the door. The house felt yellow with light. Gerta appeared, an old blue apron of Molly’s tucked about her. Because I’m the Cook. That’s Why was scribbled across the front in bright red embroidery. The house was fragrant with garlic and the sizzle of meat, which shocked Gary because he never once saw Gerta eat anything, other than a cracker, and because he was a vegetarian. “As of right now, I no longer work for you. So now, you can eat with me.”

  Gary was dumbfounded. He wasn’t hungry at all, but he followed her to the dining room where she had set the table with a red cloth and matching napkins and good china service for two, where there were the pewter candlesticks and two white candles already lit, and even a small startling bowl of yellow flowers.

  Gerta folded her hands across her belly and for the first time, Gary noticed she wasn’t wearing her white uniform. No, she was in a blue printed dress with a matching belt, and small gold hoop earrings. Her hair was faintly curled about her ears. She had put on perfume, too. He could smell the scent, lily of the valley. “Well, it’s a special occasion,” she said to him.

  “Dinner smells terrific,” Gary lied.

  “Lemon chicken,” she said proudly.

  Gary didn’t have the heart to tell her he didn’t eat meat, that he was too nerved up to eat anything. He sat down, unfolding his napkin. “I can’t wait,” he said.

  “Otis is sleeping.” Gerta said. She dashed into the kitchen and brought out a steaming white tureen, ladling big chunks of chicken onto his plate. Gary knew enough to realize how difficult it must be for Gerta to not only have cooked in his house, but to dine in it as well, and to dine with him. He told himself to think of it as the mock yam concoctions some of the Chinese restaurants in the city served. Think of it as tofu, pounded and dried, masquerading as meat. He took a bite. It won’t kill you, he told himself, and tried an old trick he used to ply as a boy—not breathing while you ate, which rendered any food tasteless.

  Gerta took a voracious bite, smacked her lips, and said, “It’s good, isn’t it? My husband Benjamin loves it.”

  “Delicious,” Gary said. He looked at Gerta. “It must be hard for your husband when you’re on a job.”

  Gerta shrugged. “It’s sometime good for couples to be apart.” She picked at her dinner. “Sometimes.”

  Gary ate, knowing he’d probably be ill later, the way all vegetarians are after they chance meat, but he didn’t care. He cut the meat up in tiny pieces and tried to fork it to the edge of his plate. “Otis is so quiet,” Gary said.

  “He’s been sleeping so much today. He knows I’m going and he doesn’t want to be awake for it. He might be angry for a few days, but let him express it and then it will pass.”

  For dessert there was apple pie, flaky and delicate, clouded with cream. He wolfed his piece down and Gerta stood up, gathering plates.

  She wouldn’t let him help her clean up. “No, no,” she said, when he started to bring his dish to the sink. “I like to do them.” She got a soft dish towel out of the drawer and lay it along the counter. She put a skin of plastic wrap over the leftovers and set them in the freezer, and when she was finished, the kitchen smelled of lemon cleanser and Fantastik. It looked as if no one had ever been in it at all, let alone cooked an entire meal. She rubbed her hands briskly together and glanced at the clock. Nine-thirty. “Your Suzanne is late,” she announced. “And I had better go call a cab.”
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br />   She went upstairs, got her suitcase, and came down to call a cab.

  “Ten minutes, he said,” she told Gary. She gave an odd little smile and then thrust her hand forward and slid something into his palm. “My number. You call if you need advice on anything.” She nodded. “You don’t forget. Otis is a good little boy and he knows what’s going on. He tells me. Every night he prays for his mama and a baby’s prayers go right to God before anyone else’s. Even the pope’s.”

  Usually Gary would have rolled his eyes, but this time, he stepped forward and hugged Gerta. At first she was stiff, but he kept holding, and then her body relaxed and swayed against him, and then, to his surprise, she lifted her arms and hugged him back.

  “Well,” she said, disengaging. “Don’t forget the things I taught you and you should be fine. You have the notebook.” She straightened. “You relax, you listen hard. Otis is speaking to you, too.”

  He nodded dumbly. “I need one more look at my boy,” she said.

  He followed her into Otis’s room. Otis was on his back, a striped blue blanket about him, a pacifier in his mouth. Gerta leaned over the crib. She whispered something he couldn’t hear, something that sounded German, something he couldn’t be privy to. And then she glided out of the room, and he followed her, and it wasn’t until they were both back in the light of the hallway that he saw that her eyes were damp.

  chapter five

  Suzanne got out of the cab, staring around her. Oh, God. This was the boonies. She had forgotten what an armpit New Jersey was, how the whole state made her want to scream. Those squatty houses in those weird pastels, the scrubby trees and the stupid plastic ornaments on the porches, the cloth flags. I’ll have to kill myself, she thought. I won’t last a day here, let alone months. I’ll die. Unless I’m driven nuts, first. There wasn’t even a dog on the street. Did people here still think if you weren’t in your pajamas and in front of the TV by eight that there was something wrong with you? She suddenly thought of this cartoon she had once seen, the caption on it: Houdini fleeing New Jersey. Well, she wanted to run, too, but she was no magician. It wouldn’t be so easy this time.

  The driver finished dumping her things on the sidewalk. “Forty bucks,” he said. Suzanne cursed under her breath and dug into her purse. Gary had sent her the plane fare. He should have sent her cab fare, too. Maybe he would have if she had told him she was being evicted, that she hadn’t had a head of hair to cut or color in nearly two months.

  Jesus. She was freezing right down to her toes. How could she have forgotten how cold it got here? She shivered, blowing on her hands, turning up the collar of her blue cotton coat, stamping her feet.

  Suzanne blinked at Molly’s house. One of those two-story deals with a black iron gate. It looked better than anyone else’s on the block and she had to admit it beat her crummy little studio by miles and miles. A house. God. Suzanne hadn’t cared when Angela had given Molly the house in Elizabeth. Suzanne certainly hadn’t wanted it, especially if it meant coming back to New Jersey. But now that all of Suzanne’s money was gone, the thought of having a house—even a New Jersey one—made her feel a little prickly. It made her wonder, how did Molly get to have a house and she didn’t?

  Gary had told her he was in dire straits, that there really was no money anymore. Anyone would have heard the begging in his voice, anyone would have believed him, but that was on the phone, and here was this whole house, with those pricey-looking blinds and that fancy carved door.

  What she believed about Molly was a whole other story. How could Molly be as sick as Gary said? How could she possibly believe that? When they were kids, Suzanne was the one always dosing up on antibiotics. Molly never missed a day of school—not that she would have, even if she had had the Bubonic plague.

  Well, maybe Gary was exaggerating about Molly, the same way he was about his money. Maybe he was playing her for a fool, wanting a free nursemaid, a free housekeeper, the way Angela had. Blood didn’t mean anything. Family was a cheat. She had learned that lesson early on, and she wasn’t about to forget it now. She blew on her fingers again. What did it matter? She had no other place to go.

  She rang the bell. Musical chimes. So corny they made her wince. The front door opened and a man came out onto the rim of the porch. So this was Gary. He wasn’t much. She’d pass him on the street and not look twice. Certainly not anyone she’d want to be with. Not like Ivan. She saw Ivan’s beautiful face, his hair, black and soft like a wing of a crow. She shook her head until his image disappeared from her mind.

  “Suzanne?” His voice was hoarse and deep.

  “In person.” She tried to sound upbeat.

  He looked past her, his smile fading. She felt a flash of shame. She knew what he was looking at. She could see the gears in his mind whirring away when he saw all her stuff: the five big battered suitcases, tied shut with rope, the taped-up cardboard boxes. Everything she had managed to grab from her apartment except the furniture and the roach motels.

  He opened the door wider. “Please. Come in.” He ushered her inside, helping her with her coat. He hung the coat on a padded hanger, buttoning it at the throat, as if it were worth something.

  It took him four trips to drag her things in. He never once asked her to help, and she never offered. He was panting when he was finished, all red in the face like a half-ripe tomato. For a moment, she and Gary just stood there looking at each other, and then he awkwardly motioned to the couch. She was still freezing. She looked around for the thermostat, rubbing her arms. “Could you turn up the heat?”

  He knotted his brow. “Can I get you a sweater?”

  “It’s really freezing in here.”

  He stalled for a minute and then walked over to the thermostat and turned it up. She heard a little flare, like a match striking. The pipes banged. The heat hissed on. She had forgotten all the sounds a house made. Creepy. Like the house was alive, breathing down your neck. Waiting for you.

  She sniffed. The house smelled, too. Milk and powder and dirty diapers. She wrinkled her nose and dug around in her bag for a cigarette, pulling up a rumpled pack from the bottom of her purse, a fold of matches. She was down to her last four cigarettes but she held the pack out to him, thinking she’d start off on the right foot. She’d be polite. Generous. “Luckies okay?”

  “Actually, could you not smoke in the house? We don’t smoke, and with the baby …” his voice trailed off.

  “Sure. Of course. Only outside.” She dropped the cigarettes into her purse. She had only vaguely wanted a cigarette, but now that he told her she couldn’t, she was dying for one. No cigarettes in the house. She was going to have to be locked up.

  She looked around. Her whole apartment was only slightly larger than Molly’s living room. Molly used to be so neat, you’d think she used a ruler to line things up. But this room was just as cluttered and messy as Suzanne’s studio. Dirty plates were stacked on the coffee table, laundry piled on a chair.

  Gary followed Suzanne’s gaze. “It’s usually tidier,” he apologized, “but the baby nurse just left.”

  A baby nurse, she thought. How could you afford a baby nurse one week and not another? “Nice place.”

  Suzanne looked past the shelves of books (she had never been much of a reader herself) and saw a wall of photos. She got up to look at them: Gary and Molly. Gary and Molly. Kissing. Holding hands. On a beach. At the park. Hallmark stuff. And then a single black and white photo swam out at her, startling her.

  She knew this photo. She had grown up hating it. It was a picture of Angela, the year she won the beauty contest. Thin and beautiful in a little two-piece, laughing like she didn’t have a care in the world. Like her whole life would always be apple pie and ice cream. Angela always made everyone who came into the house admire it. She’d fish for compliments and then she’d sigh and say how entering that beauty contest had really been the worst thing in the world for her because if she hadn’t, maybe then she’d have been able to make something of herself. To be someone
, other than a child bride, a struggling single mother stuck in suburbia. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my girls—” she always added, her voice trailing off. That was the part that always hurt Suzanne the most. Almost as much as seeing the photo now.

  She scanned the wall again. Not a single picture of herself up there. Just as well. She’d never be that beautiful again. People used to stop her on the street just to comment on her long black hair. Her clients used to beg her to make theirs look like hers, with its glints of blue and plum running through it, its mirror sheen. Now, Suzanne’s black was from a tube. She didn’t have to look in a mirror to know she had faded from too many worries, too little sleep, and too many cigarettes. Suzanne blew a puff of air up toward her long bangs. They used to make her eyes look as big as soup bowls. Now, they just hid some of the tiny lines that had begun to etch their way into her skin like they were a road map to Nowhere. Well, at least she was still thin. Maybe too thin.

  “Otis is sleeping,” Gary said. “We don’t have to whisper or anything because he seems to like noise. He’ll be up in about an hour and then I’ll show you all about the care and maintenance of a newborn. He’s really very good.” He rubbed at his forehead. “You’ve been around babies?”

  “Yup,” she lied.

  “Come on, let’s have some tea.”

  She shuddered. She hated tea. Angela used to have Suzanne make big pitchers of it because it was cheaper than juice or soda. Supermarket brand, the same bag used for three cups, so what you ended up with always tasted like boiled socks.

  “Do you have coffee?”

  He led her into the yellow kitchen and dug around the shelf. “No coffee.” He shook his head. “No lots of things. I need to go shopping.”

  It was just as well. If she even smelled coffee she’d probably jump out of her skin.

  He stopped. “Maybe when I’m at the hospital, you could take Otis and pick up some things. Some days I could leave you the car.”