Coming Back to Me

by Caroline Leavitt

  “Gary?” she said, but he shut the door. He went out into the street.

  He walked around and around, waiting for Suzanne to leave for the hospital, but as soon as he saw the car moving down the street, her head bent forward, her sunglasses on, he felt even worse than before. He didn’t want to go back in that empty house and feel the walls closing around him. He didn’t know what he wanted. He looked down at Otis, who had fallen fast asleep against his chest. He suddenly felt so lonely he didn’t know what to do with himself. He walked around the block twice, the baby bouncing against his chest, just in time for the paperboy, a scrappy little kid in a baseball jacket, to zoom the papers willy-nilly at everyone’s door. Gary’s landed on the sidewalk and he plucked it up.

  He found himself at Emma’s door. He felt like a foundling that had put himself on her stoop. He didn’t know what he wanted, what he’d say, only that he didn’t want to be alone another minute. He looked up at her house. A light flickered on. He could hear her TV blasting from the open window. She was up.

  He rang her bell.

  It took Emma a few seconds to get to the door. She was already dressed and when she saw Gary and Otis, she looked surprised. “Is everything all right?” she said worriedly. “Do you need me to sit?”

  He handed her his paper. “The kid knocked it in your rosebushes. I thought I’d deliver it by hand.”

  She looked at the paper curiously. “But this isn’t mine. I don’t get the paper.”

  “Oh, my mistake,” Gary said stupidly. He stood there like a fool. Of course she didn’t get the paper. On paper recycling days, his was the house with the stacks and stacks of boxes and newspapers and magazines. Her house barely had a flyer. Even so, he couldn’t manage to move.

  “Well—” Emma said, glancing at her watch. Gary didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want her to close the door. He didn’t want to go into his house, didn’t want to go into a coffee shop by himself, and he was so exhausted, he didn’t think he could walk another aimless block. And then, like a sparkler going off, he had an idea.

  “Would you have breakfast with me? With us?” Gary blurted. “My treat? We could go to Josie’s down the street. I hear it’s pretty good.”

  Emma looked perplexed for a moment. And then she suddenly relaxed. “Don’t be silly. I don’t believe in paying for food when you can make it just as good at home. You come in here instead.”

  She held open the door and instantly he smelled cigarette smoke and coffee. It struck him suddenly funny. All this time he had lived on this block and he had never once been inside Emma’s house before. He had never been inside any of the neighbors’. Had never caught more than a glimpse of the houses because they all kept heavy curtains on the windows, drawn even in the hottest summer days.

  Once inside, Emma didn’t even bother to give him the tour, the way he would have. She didn’t tell him what anything was, or what it might mean. She didn’t apologize or brag about a thing. He followed her through the living room. The walls were all dark wood-paneled. The rug was green shag, the furniture heavy and upholstered, some of it covered in white plastic, and dead center on the wall was a badly painted seascape with churning blue water. White checkmark seagulls. Yellow circle sun. Gary blinked at it, astounded.

  Emma followed his gaze. “Isn’t that beautiful?” Emma said. “My cousin did it. Very talented girl.”

  Gary nodded. “Very,” he said, trying to sound sincere. He had never in his life seen anything like it.

  “Right this way.”

  She led him past the dining room.

  The kitchen was papered in a garish big blue and red plaid. Here were the photos, plastered all over the refrigerator. Kids’ faces, round and soft as apple dumplings, grinning up at him. Emma followed his gaze. She pointed out the faces. “Theresa’s grandniece. My cousin’s kids. Bill’s nephew. There’s Maryann and Betsy and Robert John.” She tapped out the photos with her fingers.

  “Sit,” she ordered. He sat at the table. Emma slid an apron over her and tied it in back. Then she went to the refrigerator and started taking things out, humming to herself. Eggs. American cheese. Butter. She got up and took out a bowl from the cabinet and cracked two eggs into it. She sizzled grease in a pan.

  He liked sitting there, listening to her cook. He felt warm. Comfortable. Companionable. He didn’t want to move an inch. He stroked Otis’s back.

  She poured orange juice from a can into polka-dotted jelly glasses. She warmed Otis’s bottle for him in case he woke up, and then she set out extra butter and toast and napkins. She scooped the eggs, nubby yellow chunks, onto plates and set them on the table with a flourish. “Hard scrambled. Better than any diner, if I say so myself.”

  “Molly and I met in a diner,” Gary said, and as soon as he said it, he felt a knot in his heart. He felt suddenly exhausted. His shoulders dropped. He felt Emma’s eyes on him.

  Emma pulled up a chair and sat down carefully next to Gary. She placed one hand over Gary’s. He stared down at her hand, at the web of wrinkles, the peach-colored nails, the tiny diamond wedding ring. “We’re all praying for Molly, Gary,” Emma said quietly. “We’ve got a very good priest over at St. Ann’s and he says special novenas for Molly every Sunday. We even have a prayer circle. Molly’s got so many prayers, I’m sure she must be hearing them.”

  “Really? You all pray for her?”

  Emma looked so concerned and motherly that Gary suddenly wanted to fling himself into her arms, to have her pat his back, to tell him it was all going to be all right. He wanted to say something to her, but he couldn’t think what to say. Emma folded her fingers over his, and patted them, and then released his hand. She looked at him as if he were a child. “Gary, we pray for you and Otis, too.”

  Suzanne sat in Molly’s hospital room. Sometimes it was hard to look at her sister. Molly had that pallor sick people did, as if illness took away your skin tone. She had gone all puffy, and Suzanne could only imagine what her sister’s hair must feel like. But what she hated the most was the way Molly acted around her, the way she stared and stared and wouldn’t look away, as if she were trying to figure something out.

  “So what did you and Gary do today?” Molly said.

  “I was on my own today.”

  “Uh-huh. I bet you can’t wait to get back to California,” Molly said.

  “No—it’s okay here, it’s fine.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  “Why are you talking to me like this?”

  Molly stared at Suzanne, considering. She gave her that stare again that made Suzanne feel like jumping out of her skin. “Are you in love with Gary?” Molly blurted.

  Suzanne stood up. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “You’re not answering. Is Gary in love with you?”

  “Molly, this is ridiculous—”

  “No, it’s not ridiculous. I’d ask him myself except he probably wouldn’t tell me. At least not now, not while I’m stuck sick in here. But you, you tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “It’s my husband. My baby. My house.” Molly swallowed. “My life. I have a right to know.”

  “Molly!”

  “I know something’s going on.”

  A nurse breezed in with a wheelchair. “X rays, honey,” she said.

  Molly didn’t even look at Suzanne when Suzanne left.

  Suzanne drove home feeling sick. Are you in love with Gary? Molly had asked. Love. The heart was a lying little muscle that didn’t know the difference between good and bad, between being wanted and unwanted. You could fool yourself a million ways when it came to love, and she had probably gone through all of them. Is Gary in love with you? She saw Gary in her mind, sifting through Internet printouts about Molly’s illness, she saw Gary swaying Otis to sleep, she saw him looking through the photograph albums filled with Molly. She felt him touching the side of her own face, tugging her roughly to him. What kind of question is that? she should have asked Molly. And it was true. What kind
of question was it?

  The next morning, Molly was already unhooked from the IV and in the wheelchair, protective plastic taped to her belly, a towel, shampoo, and soap in her lap, when Gary arrived. “I’m getting a shower this morning!” she said, triumphant.

  Gary shook his head. “No. That can’t be right. The hospital’s letting you do that?”

  “Yup. There’s one right on this floor.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” he said doubtfully.

  “Whose side are you on?” She felt suddenly angry. He wasn’t the one stuck in here. He was outside. With Suzanne.

  Gary looked offended. “What kind of question is that? Your side.”

  “Then let me take my goddamned shower.”

  He flinched at her tone. He held up his hands. “All right, fine.” He wheeled her out into the hall. “Left, and then right,” she told him, until he led her to a door along the wall. SHOWER, it said.

  “I’d better go get the nurse now, right? To go in with you. Or can I just come in with you?”

  “Oh, I forgot,” Molly said. “No, the nurse would be better. You’d better get a nurse.”

  He hesitated and then started to wheel her with him. “No, no—” she said. “I don’t want to lose my place in line. I’ll wait here.”

  She watched Gary winding his way down the aisle, looking back at her three different times to make sure she was all right, but it didn’t make her feel safe. It made her feel closeted. Eight o’clock. The nurses were all busy making their rounds, and they were short-staffed today. Molly had had to badger the nurses three different times just to get the wheelchair. It would take Gary awhile, she bet, to get a nurse to leave a sick patient just to help Molly take a shower no one seemed in a hurry to let her have.

  She wheeled closer to the door. No one was in the corridor except a patient struggling to walk, one hand braced along the wall, not even looking at her. Molly opened the shower-room door and stood up, using the door handle for leverage. She stepped carefully into the shower room, shutting the door behind her. She looked down. Oh, my God. A lock. She hadn’t seen a lock since she had gone into the hospital. A door you could shut and keep people out. Privacy. Oh, what a simple, blissful thing.

  She locked the door with a satisfying click.

  Molly looked around. The shower room looked like one big single bathroom. There was a sink and a tub with a kind of rubber chair built into it, with chrome handrails and a handheld shower nozzle. There was a blue tile floor, a toilet, a wastebasket, and an extra bench. Guardrails circled the room. Well, she’d have to work fast. She already felt tired.

  Molly turned on the water. She shucked off her clothes and eased herself onto the rubber seat, and as soon as the water hit her, she felt jolted. “Oh!” She gasped. She couldn’t imagine anything feeling like that. The water was a shock. The heat an embrace. Her skin seemed to vibrate. The water hummed. She couldn’t help laughing. Her mouth dropped open. She threw her head back, gripping the handrails of the chair. She shut her eyes with pleasure. She braced her feet against the rubber bottom of the tub. The water beat down on her, intense and blissful. She sighed. She held on tight. It felt as if all the heat and damp were loosening something up all over her, sliding it off. Layers of hospital. Coming right off in a rush. All the endless morning rounds and medicine in tiny paper cups. The noisily beeping IVs, the food that tasted like paper. The goddamn blood takers and nurses and med students who woke her up at three in the morning. She reached up one hand and grabbed the soap in the tub and used it on her hair. Instantly, her head tingled. Instantly, she felt lighter. Another layer sloughed off. She felt her scalp, alive and tingling. She felt electrified. She laughed out loud.

  “Molly?” She heard him outside the door, faintly muffled. Gary. But she wasn’t moving. Not for anyone. She wasn’t leaving this bliss. “Molly!” His voice boomed. He tried the door and Molly turned the water hotter. She made more steam. “Molly? Are you in there? The door’s locked! Molly!” She turned the water pressure up. She sang loudly.

  “Molly! Are you crazy? You can’t be in there alone!”

  “La, la, la,” she sang through the door, her voice rising in sudden rage. “I’m singing, I can’t hear you!” She felt suddenly powerful. Nothing could hurt her now. Nothing could even touch her.

  “Molly, open the door now! What are you doing? I have to be in there with you!”

  “La, la, la. I know about you! I know about Suzanne!”

  “Molly, it’s not true—Molly, nothing happened. Molly, open the goddamned door!”

  “Fuck you,” she shouted. “I’m washing you down the drain!”

  She kept singing. La, la, la. Louder and louder, and the angrier she got, the more powerful she felt. A thousand times stronger. Water cascaded down her in warm sheets, intoxicating her, making her dizzy with the pure bliss of it. She gripped the sides of the chair. Gary banged on the door. “I’m getting somebody!” he shouted. But this time, she didn’t bother to shout back at him. The banging stopped. All she heard was the hiss of the water, the rough tag of her own breathing, and then she slowly leaned forward and turned off the water.

  She still felt great. Her whole body was buzzing. Everything seemed more intense. The white of the tub was blinding. The blue of the tiles shimmered. Even the air seemed somehow electrified.

  Here we go, she thought. She didn’t think she could pull herself up, but she didn’t feel terrified. Take it one step at a time. She tugged herself up. Beads of water fell from the plastic over her gauze covering. Her legs were butter, startling her. Easy. You can do it. You can do it. The same words she told herself when she was giving birth. It made her laugh out loud. She shuffled, smiling to herself, holding on to the wall, making her way slowly to the sink. One baby step at a time. You can do it. She grabbed at the sink. She caught her breath a little and this time looked frankly at herself in the mirror, at her eyes, sparkling as if they had chips of mica in them. As round and enormous in her face as dinner plates. Her skin flushed pink. Her hair was fat with the steam, curled in damp wisps. Her heart was beating like a bird’s heart, fast and thin and fluttery as wings. She felt like she could fly away. She slid on her dress, stepping into her stretchy shoes, and then she took the three steps to the door and unlocked it. She opened it up to Gary.

  His face changed when he saw her. He was scared and then he was something else. His eyes widened. His mouth opened. She felt herself coloring. Something sprang between them. He stared at her, astonished, and then suddenly he grabbed her and kissed her deep and passionately on the mouth. He took her arms and wrapped them about his neck. “You are so fucking beautiful and I am so fucking insane for you,” he said. And then, right before she could start kissing him back, she fell, collapsing against him into a narrowing cone of black.

  She woke in a dark room. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to the dim light. Nighttime. Hours later, she thought. A shadow moved, and then came into focus, and there was Dr. Price in his white coat, hovering over her, glaring.

  “You did a very stupid thing,” Dr. Price scolded. “What if you had fallen? What if you had hemorrhaged? You must think about these things.” He frowned, shaking his head at her. He left the room.

  Molly smiled. She’d think about it all right. She waggled her fingers. She flexed her toes. Oh. That wonderful feeling was still there. The pleasure, so keen she could have skated along it. She still was feeling lighter. The hospital’s grip was really loosened. She had done it. She had really done it. There was more of her now than there was of the hospital. And she was just going to have to find ways to tip the balance even more.

  chapter ten

  Suzanne’s last appointment had left minutes ago. Otis was still sleeping and she was sweeping up the last of the hair, contemplating a quick bath, when the doorbell rang.

  Suzanne wiped her hands along her smock and grabbed for the door handle. She bet it was a walk-in, or the postman with a package, or Gary, who forgot something, who maybe she could c
onvince into staying in the same room with her long enough to have a simple conversation, a talk, which was a long time coming. She couldn’t bear the way he looked past her as if she wasn’t even there.

  The bell rang again. “Hold your horses,” she called. She opened the door, and there, like a dream, was Ivan.

  She couldn’t move. Her hands flew to her hair, which was bunched into a sloppy tail, to her jeans, speckled with color. In all the times she had fantasized running into Ivan, it had always been when she was prepared for it, when she had been dressed in something tight and shiny and low-cut, with high heels and her hair gleaming like a mirror. Perfume on every pulse point. She had imagined him spotting her on the arm of a gorgeous, adoring guy, a big shimmery ring on her finger, and Ivan staring at her with all the regret and desire she had felt for him these five years since he had walked out on her. But she had never once imagined this.

  “So, can I come in?” Ivan said.

  She had forgotten his voice, how even his speech could sound musical. But she could never forget his eerie blue eyes, his long, beautiful black hair. He looked as if no time had passed, as if nothing had ever happened to him. She nodded and stepped aside.

  The air in the room changed as soon as he was inside. Her knees were collapsing, changing to gum. “What are you doing here?”

  He sat down, not taking his eyes from her. “Something I should have done a long time ago. Looking for you.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Followed your trail. One phone number led to another and when I finally got to the end of the line, I remembered your sister. You told me she taught, and I even remembered where, so I called the school, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Just like a school, right? Still got to show you who’s in control. Anyway, I had to practically beg just to find the town she lived in. I figured your sister would know where you were.” He shook his head, looking curiously around the house. “But God, Suzanne, of all the places you could go to, I never thought you’d come back here. It really surprised me.”