“I have,” I said. “I think right now I’m losing hope.”
Bev sighed. She looked away from me, scratched her neck, and for a moment I was terrified she was going to tell me to leave. “Actually—well, sure, I remember that feeling.”
“You do?”
“Oh, honey, of course,” she said. She looked at me bleakly. “It wasn’t really that long ago.”
I closed my eyes. All he’d said was that they were changing the drugs, I reminded myself. He hadn’t said the cancer was back, just that things were a little bit troubling.
“I remember the day they told me it was cancer,” Bev said. “I was supposed to go to a meeting, but I just went home instead. Didn’t call anyone. Hid in bed. Let myself be terrified all day. The next day I got up and started fighting.”
“I’m so scared,” I said.
She looked at me. Those eyes, they were warm and melting, cow’s eyes. “Listen, can I ask you something?”
I shrugged.
“What do you want more than anything else in the world?”
“What do I want? I want to live.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “But if that’s not what you can control—if that’s not what you’re in charge of—what else is it that you want? That you can achieve?”
I shook my head, unsure what she meant.
“Listen, when I had cancer, I remember that I had to figure it out. It took me a while, but I realized . . . there were many nights when I was up late, my youngest daughter was still at home, I’d look at her sleeping and I’d think, all I want is for you to grow up happy. All I want is for you to be okay when I’m gone. Even more than I wanted to be healthy, I wanted her to be okay. I knew she needed me more than my other girls. That’s what I wanted most.”
“I know that feeling,” I whispered.
“I realized that, and then I had something to focus on. Something to live for. To prepare her to keep going.”
If I focused on the mess on her desk, I would not cry.
“Sometimes I knew my daughter would come into our bedroom when I was napping, or she thought I was napping, and I’d pretend to be asleep so she wouldn’t think I was up worrying. It was sort of funny, this charade we put on for each other. Not like with my husband. He was just, ‘Okay? You feeling okay, sweetheart?’ And then off to work. But my daughter—she was so tuned in. I was so scared for her. More than even saving myself, I wanted to save her.”
I looked at Beverly’s warm wide face. It would be okay if I cried. I closed my eyes again and put a finger under each to catch the tears. Wordlessly, Bev handed me a tissue.
“Do you believe in God, Karen?”
I deflated, shook my head.
“Me neither,” she said; I reinflated a little. “I’m a Catholic and all, sent my girls to Catholic school, but I never could believe in an actual guy with a white beard up there looking down on me. I sort of wished I could, though. It might have helped.”
“I’m the same,” I said, fingers still under my eyes. “The same way. Jewish, though.”
“They want you to believe, don’t they?”
“Who?”
“The message boards. Facebook. The priests.”
“I only have a therapist. And my sister.”
“Are they helpful?”
“If it weren’t for my sister, I’d be dead already.” Bev handed me another tissue.
“I’m glad you have her,” she said. She waited for me to blow my nose. I crumpled up the tissue, stuck it in a pocket. I was pitiful. “So what did the doctor say today?”
I could barely get it out. “Troubling numbers.”
“So that could mean anything.”
“New medication,” I said.
She nodded. “What I decided to do, when I was really sick—I didn’t have God, I kept having to put on a front for my kid, I was absolutely terrible at taking things one day at a time—”
“Me too,” I said.
“I decided to trust myself. Just trust that I was doing the right things. That I was getting the right care, had picked the right doctors. That I was taking care of myself, that I was preparing my daughter to live the best life she could. That helped me be optimistic. And being optimistic, I think, helped me live. Just, you know, having faith in myself and the world around me that it would be all right.”
“I have no faith,” I said.
“Well, get some,” Bev said. “You wouldn’t be where you are if you weren’t smart enough to make the right choices. If you have no faith in God, have some in yourself.”
“My son’s father wants to take him away from me.”
“No,” Bev said, “he can’t. He won’t.”
“He’s going to try.”
“While you’re sick?”
I wiped my cheek with the back of my wrist. “He thinks I’m weak.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Bev said. “Anyone who knows anything about politics in this city knows how tough you are.”
“How tough I used to be.”
“Karen, listen,” Bev said, and now she changed her tone, became steelier. “Ace needs you. That’s why he hired you. Because you’re tough. Nobody can take anything from you.”
For the briefest of moments, she reached across the desk and touched my arm. In the quiet, cheerful office, I could almost not think about the infusion ward above us, the woman with the bluish skin, the fact that I was there to do the recon on the opponent.
Bev took a breath. “Listen, can I tell you something? Your man, no offense,” she said, “your guy is a terrible guy.”
“You think?” I said.
“I know,” she said. “Someone should put that son of a bitch out of office, and I’ll tell you, Karen, it might as well be me. Listen, I’m a woman, the mother of daughters—I can’t stand being represented by that man. Twenty-year-old girls! It’s such a cliché. And frankly, the fact that he barely bothers to hide it—that’s what’s most upsetting, I think. He doesn’t even bother to hide.”
“He’s going to win,” I said, trying to get in gear.
“He might not,” Bev said.
“You know the polls?”
She made a pshaw gesture with his hands. “I think he won’t,” she said. “Look, I’ve beaten long odds my whole life. I was born”—she sounded like a seasoned candidate now—“to an illiterate farm worker and his fifteen-year-old wife. I came to America, went to college, got a graduate degree. I’ve been married for thirty-nine years. How many odds are that? I’m a Dominican woman with my own secretary.”
“That’s not bad,” I said.
“And I haven’t even gotten to the cancer. So when people ask me what I’m doing, how I think I can win, I tell them that I’ve always been a winner. Why would I stop now? Besides, I can drop a bomb on Ace whenever I want. There was another twenty-year-old, you know.”
“Nobody cares,” I said, but I did, in fact, feel energized by Bev’s threat. “Incumbents are reelected about ninety percent of the time in city council races.”
“Doesn’t sound like one hundred percent to me.”
“It’s close enough.”
“When the public finds out about his latest—”
“There’s no proof.”
“Not yet,” she said.
I glanced up at the pictures behind her. Her daughters all looked like her, same big brown eyes. Her husband was bald with a mustache. Bev caught me looking. I wondered which one was the daughter that she loved the most.
Bev smiled at me, and the fraught air of competition dissolved. It was all an act anyway.
“What am I going to do?” I asked her. I fingered the name tag on my lapel with my fingertips. She should have called security or the psychiatry ward. What the hell was I doing here? I was a lunatic.
“You’re going to keep living,” Bev said. “You’re going to keep working for your son of a bitch. You’re going to keep living until you’re dead. You’re going to fight for your son. You’re a mother,” she said. “You have no choice
. And you’re going to trust yourself, that you’re a hell of a campaign manager. It’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t respond.
Her phone rang. “I’ve got to take this,” she said.
“Thanks for talking with me.”
“Good luck,” she said.
“Good luck to you,” I said, and I meant it. Then I made my way out of her office, as behind me, Bev said, Hi sweetheart, I’m here, just some campaign business, and I felt good because I had just done another morning’s work.
THAT NIGHT, YOU woke up screaming.
“Jake! Jake!” Allison was already by your side, already shushing you; she was sharing your room. “Jacob, baby.”
I hadn’t heard you shriek like this in the night since Dr. Susan explained to you my diagnosis.
“I had a dream,” you said, when you could finally speak, “about Electro.”
“Who is Electro?” I said at the same time Allie said, “Electro from Spider-Man?”
You nodded pitifully. “He’s the bad guy in Spider-Man 3.” Your voice was hoarse; you were shaking. “Can I sleep next to you?”
“How scary is Spider-Man 3, exactly? Just who is the intended audience for Spider-Man 3?”
“He had it at his house,” you said.
“How scary is it?”
Allie said, “It’s scary.”
“Mom, he didn’t know—”
“You weren’t allowed to see it?”
“Don’t yell at him,” you said.
Your fucking father. I could not fucking believe it. As though you didn’t have enough legitimate reasons to have nightmares? And now you had one more? It was everything I had not to pick up the phone right that second and lose my mind on him.
“Mom?”
“Come on,” I said, taking your hand and walking you to my bedroom. I could not fucking even deal with this. Your father, giving you nightmares.
“Mom, please? I told him it was okay.”
“But you know it’s not.”
“I wanted to see it.”
“We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Jacob.”
“Just please promise? Don’t yell at him?”
“Jake—”
“Please?”
“Okay,” I sighed. I needed you to go back to sleep and I knew you wouldn’t if you thought I was going to go ballistic on your father. “Okay.”
“Thanks, Mom,” you said. In five minutes you were back asleep, because you were a child and had a gift for it. I, on the other hand, was up for the rest of the night, waiting for the sun to rise so that I could call your father and freak out at him. Except that by the time day finally broke, I was so tired that I realized I wouldn’t even be coherent, and also you looked so still and sweet in your sleep, that I decided I’d keep my promise to you and, for the moment, spare your father my righteous wrath. Also, of course, I was the tiniest bit glad this happened. It would be proof in court, if I needed it, that your father was entirely unfit to be your legal guardian.
12
Ten fifteen, on my way to Dr. Steiner’s, I spied the man himself, your father, walking down the street with a shopping bag in his hand. At first I thought it was a coincidence; how many years had it been since I’d seen him and now, suddenly, he was everywhere?—but then I realized that, no, he was heading for our apartment and that the shopping bag probably tolled for thee. Jesus, Jake, how much shit did a six-year-old need? Fortunately he didn’t know that you were at Chelsea Piers with Allie and that whatever goodies he was going to dispense with were bound for an empty home. Reflexively, I wanted to hide. I almost made it to the Starbucks on the corner. But then he saw me and smiled that I’m-married-now smile, and I knew I’d look like a fool if I ran. I smiled back.
“I was in the neighborhood,” he said, by way of greeting. It was the first time I’d seen him without you around to shield me, and my heart immediately hurt, my stomach hurt.
“Okay,” I said.
“Getting coffee?”
“Going to the doctor,” I said.
“Everything okay?”
“Sure,” I said. I wanted to bring up Spider-Man 3 but held my tongue. “It’s great.”
“Time for some coffee before you go?”
A coffee date with your father. I looked down at what I was wearing: grubby black pants, a loose T-shirt. “No,” I said. He looked disappointed. “But you can walk me to the bus stop.”
We walked to the block in silence that was not at all companionable; if I’d known he was coming, I would have put on lipstick. Who did he think he was that he could just show up in our neighborhood like this? Was he stalking you? Was he stalking me? Did he want to see if I was still sick, if I was any closer to death?
“What’s in the bag?”
“Some of Jake’s clothes,” your dad said. “He left them at our house.”
“He was just there for one night.”
“He overpacked,” he said. “He brought three bathing suits.”
“I see.” You’d brought every bathing suit you owned. We reached the bus shelter and I scanned the schedule posted to the side. Eight minutes till the next crosstown. “You could have mailed them.”
“I had some stuff to do in the city today anyway. It’s a nice walk up from midtown.”
I didn’t say anything, looked down the street to see if maybe a bus would show up early.
“Anyway, I was thinking—”
“You let him watch Spider-Man 3.”
“What?”
A Vietnamese girl I recognized from the nail salon joined us in the bus shelter.
“He had nightmares last night. Screaming nightmares. Because you showed him a deeply inappropriate movie. Why would you do that? What’s the matter with you?”
“I covered his eyes during the scary parts.”
“Are you joking?”
“No, I . . . He said he wanted to watch it.”
“Do you have any idea what the thirteen stands for in PG-13?” I was hissing. “He’s six, you idiot.”
“I didn’t—”
“Like he needs anything else to be afraid of right now.”
“I didn’t—” He honestly looked abashed. “Is he okay?”
“Of course he’s okay,” I said. “It was just a nightmare.”
“Yeah, but—” He gripped his shopping bag, looked down. “I’m really sorry.”
I shrugged. I wondered how my cheeks looked; this morning they looked sallow so I slapped myself a few times, lightly, to get the blood running. I couldn’t look sick in front of your father—or any sicker than naturally I must have looked.
“But otherwise we had a good time,” your father said, his moment of mortification passing in the breeze.
I slapped my cheek lightly, quickly, like I was slapping a bug. “Bugs,” I said.
“Actually, I was thinking,” your dad said, “some of my clients have box seats at Yankee Stadium. They never use them. And the Yankees hardly ever give anyone nightmares.” He tried a grin.
“Right,” I said. The morning was muggy and smelled like trash, even inside the shelter.
“I’d be happy to take Jake some time.”
I watched the traffic for a moment, counted nine yellow cabs. But the bus wasn’t coming. I breathed in five seconds, out three. I had to ask him. “Dave, what do you want, exactly?”
“I want to get to know our son.”
“Our son? Really? Our son?”
He gave me a curious look. “Yes,” Dave said. “Jake. Our son.”
“Give me a fucking break.” A few other people joined my manicurist inside the bus shelter, so I wasn’t able to speak as loudly as I wanted to, but I managed to get enough growl into my syllables to make my point. “He’s not ours.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dave said. Gone was the slightly confused look; now he sounded peeved. “Jacob is our son.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“I don’t understand why you’re so angry at me,” he said.
�
��You don’t understand?” and I realized that in fact I was angry. I was furious, which was much easier than being scared.
“Karen, you tell me that you’re pregnant and then you disappear—”
“You kicked me out—”
“That’s actually not true.”
“Excuse me?” We were both loudly whispering, like actors.
“Karen, I called you that afternoon and I called you again the next day and the next day. You led me to believe you were getting an abortion and you never wanted to see me again.”
“That, friend, is bullshit.”
“That, friend, is not.” Dave wasn’t whispering anymore; in fact, he was almost yelling. “You said something along the lines of how you’d never bring an unwanted baby into the world, that it was your right as a woman, you could do whatever you wanted. You didn’t need me, you never needed me.”
“You fucking Catholic, all you hear is abortion, you never called me.”
“Karen,” your father said, and he wasn’t quite yelling, but he was dragging my arm so that he could get me out of the shelter and away from the pricked-up ears, even the manicurist was listening, and I thought fuck I’d be late for Steiner unless I got a cab. I wanted him to pay for my fucking cab.
“Karen,” he said again, once he’d dragged me to a fire hydrant four feet away from the shelter.
“Dave,” I said. “Please don’t touch me.”
He didn’t let go. “I am not going to keep playing he-said she-said with you, but I am going to tell you that for six years I had a son I didn’t know about. For six years you kept the biggest secret from me I can imagine anyone keeping. I am not going to let you keep him from me again.”
“What does that mean?” I shrieked, fear intruding on rage.
“It means I want to see him, Karen!”
“You can’t take him from me!”
“I know him now and I will keep knowing him.”
“He is my son! Mine! And if you think you can—”
He was still holding my arm. I don’t think he knew how easily I bruised. “He is ours.”
I pulled my arm away, wiped my eye with it.
Jacob, he never called. Your father was remembering what he wanted to remember in order to make himself feel better. Your father wanted to remember himself as the kind of person who called. But still, believe me—I was the one with the broken heart, and I’m the one who remembers every second of my pregnancy like I remember every freckle on your face.
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