I tried to map out my 168 hours with him that first week, but I couldn’t stick to it at all. I failed utterly to figure in time in the student union trying to decide if I wanted strawberry yogurt or strawberry-banana yogurt (about an hour a week), time to lie on my bed/sit at my desk/lounge at the library staring into space, reading glasses on my face, pencil in my hand, book on my lap, not reading anything (maybe five hours a week), time to feel guilty about how far off schedule I was (so many hours). I abandoned the project almost at once. We were not similar people, so we were perfect friends.
Which lasted for a whole semester and a half. We congratulated ourselves on how mature we were to have a “just friend” of the opposite sex. We sniffed pityingly at our friends’ apparent lack of imagination, their insinuations and giggled suggestions that it was only a matter of time, that sex was inevitable, that one day we would get drunk and just take off all our clothes. Then one day we did. We were sitting against a log on the beach, watching the sun set over English Bay, hunkered down in the sand and huddled against each other for warmth—so cliché, I know—and one minute we weren’t kissing and one minute we were. It was very sweet. We were blissed out enough not to mind the avalanche of I-knew-its and I-told-you-sos. We were blissed out enough not to mind anything at all. We were blissed out enough, in fact, to stay in that state for the rest of college. That’s what I mean by college boyfriend; from beginning to end really, it was me and Nico.
But it was also a very present relationship. We never lived farther away from each other than a two-minute walk. We spent the night together most nights, ate most meals together, walked to class and home again, hung out in between and after. We shared the same friends and parties and activities. It wasn’t as gross as it sounds; we hung out with lots of other people too, had loads of friends. But college is like that—we had few other responsibilities, a manageable workload, a small, tight community, dorm rooms in adjacent buildings, and the sleep needs of nineteen-year-olds. We saw a lot of each other. Which meant that graduate schools three thousand miles apart felt very far indeed. That much time on the phone, that many months without seeing each other, a relationship that had suddenly to rely entirely on words and memory with no touch at all, we had no basis for it. We’d never learned how. We tried, but we just couldn’t do it. But we’d been together long enough to say gently to each other, “We’ll always always be friends,” and mean it. Sometimes though I wondered how it would be if we’d stuck it out. Sometimes I missed him so much it was like drawstrings between the organs in my chest and the ones in my stomach. In fairness though, I would have hated Caroline anyway.
“It’s so hard to meet anyone,” he sympathized. “Caro and I can’t meet anyone either.”
Were they swinging? This was new. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“We need some friends,” said Nico, uncharacteristically plaintive. “It would be nice to have friends over for dinner or have someone have us over for dinner or have people to go to the movies with. Dating shouldn’t feel this . . . isolating. But we don’t know anyone.”
“You have a billion friends, Nico.” In addition to everything else, everyone loved him.
“Yeah, but they’re not here. You’re three hours away and always studying. My friends from grad school are all over. Everyone we work with is old.”
“Maybe you should post a personal ad online,” I suggested out of vengeance because that was what he always told me I should do, singularly because he had never even had to contemplate doing so himself.
“Yeah, sure, because ‘Nice young couple seeks other couples or friends for fun, laughter, and good times’ couldn’t possibly attract weirdos or freaks. Besides, we don’t want to try that hard. We want it just to happen.”
“You and every single person on the planet,” I said. “That’s exactly what my students say about finding a boyfriend. That’s exactly what I say about finding a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but you’re lucky, Janey,” he said. “You have so many good friends. You have people to do stuff with. You have more friends than time to hang out with them, and they’re all near you. Finding love is easy—it’s fate—you just sit back and let it happen, have faith that if it hasn’t yet, it will soon, but then that’s done, and you realize you’re on your own for the rest of your life. It’s up to you to make the rest of it happen because destiny is done with you, at least as far as your social life goes.”
Did he mean Caroline? Did he mean she was his fate and destiny? Or could he mean me? I was considering this when the other line rang.
I clicked over.
I clicked back.
“OhmygodNico, we’re having a baby. I gotta go. Shit. I have a stove and a half full of cooking food.”
“Turn it all off and go,” he said, excited too. “Call me as soon as something happens.”
“Okay. Love you.” I was about to hang up, but it occurred to me, “Nico? Having friends? Lots more responsibility than they’re cracked up to be.”
“Girlfriends as well,” he reported. “Love you too. Bye.”
You’d think that on the way to the hospital, I ruminated on the nature of love, relationships, and expectation, counted my blessings to have such wonderful people in my life, questioned mine and everyone’s search for partnership and marriage, but you’d be wrong. I thought this: holy shit. I thought it over and over and over again. Every time I deep breathed long enough to clear my head and let my mind wander to the song on the radio or the exams or whether I’d turned everything off on the stove or the fact that I hadn’t closed the windows before I left (perfect for newborns in December), I snapped immediately back to this: holy shit. Holy shit shit shit shit shit.
Thirteen
I hit some traffic. I yelled and cursed. The hospital was only five miles away, and I freaked out for every one of them. What if I missed it? What if, after all of this, the baby was already there when I got there, already born, already a person? What if Jill thought I’d deserted her in her moment of greatest need? You would think people in Seattle would be good at driving in the rain. But you would be wrong. It is one of life’s stupidest mysteries. When I finally got to the hospital and finally finally found Jill’s room, nothing, and I mean nothing at all, was happening. Jill was lying on top of the covers in jeans and a sweatshirt. Katie was sitting in a chair next to the bed in the “genius outfit” she’d shopped for specially to take her orals in. They were talking about the exam. I couldn’t believe it.
“Did they ask you about Elizabeth Barrett Browning?” Katie was saying. “They asked me about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Who even reads her anymore?”
“No, but they asked me about Julia Kristeva,” said Jill. “And I know none of them has ever read a word of hers. They’re delusional.”
“They asked me about David Mamet, and all I could think of was that horrible movie we rented whenever that was with all the gold and the guns and everybody was trying to trick everybody else. Like I needed to go to graduate school for that.”
“I cannot believe you guys are talking about orals,” I said, coming in and wavering somewhere between relief that I hadn’t missed anything and alarm that I was the only one who realized that the appropriate reaction to all this was: holy shit. “They’re over. Who cares? You’re in labor! Did you even pass by the way?” I asked Jill.
She nodded, opened her mouth to add something, then stopped mid-breath and held up a finger. “Hold on one sec.” Then her face scrunched up, and her body got all rigid. I held my breath. Katie looked bored. Then Jill relaxed. “Anyway, yeah, I passed. But they asked some really stupid stuff. Did they ask you about Kristeva?”
“Was that it? Are you contracting?” I was almost yelling.
“I think contracting is when you’re not a permanent employee,” Jill said languidly, “but that’s it. It’s not bad so far.”
“No one is alarmed,” Katie reported. “They don’t even want her to get undressed or anything yet. They said early labor could last hours, but th
ey want us to stay here because her water already broke. Something about infection. They said we should both take a nap. They haven’t even looked in on us in forty-five minutes.”
“So we’re bitching about the exams,” said Jill.
Silence.
“What’s new with you?” Katie asked brightly.
“I am freaking out,” I shouted and paced the perimeter of the room. “Why are you so calm? Does it hurt?” I asked Jill. “Does it hurt her?” I pressed Katie, not waiting for an answer from either. “Are you okay? Are you scared? Can I get you something? Did you call your mom? Are you hungry? Should you eat? What are we going to do? Shit,” I finished. No one was even trying to answer me.
“We’re just hanging out,” said Jill calmly.
“Want to watch TV?” offered Katie.
I looked from one to the other as if they were insane. I checked the hallway in a vain effort to locate the team of nurses and doctors I was sure should be there. I searched my brain for information about what we should have been doing because I was pretty sure it wasn’t watching TV. But there was nothing.
“I think we’ve earned TV,” said Jill. It was true. Along with everything else, we’d put a moratorium on the television while we studied. So we sat and watched reruns of Friends, and every five minutes or so Jill scrunched up her face with a contraction, and we waited. We waited through four different Friends reruns, two Simpsons, and two incredibly bad reality shows Katie explained as we watched (“Okay, so that’s Sophie. She’s the mean one from New Jersey. She used to be blond, but Rob said he had a thing for redheads, so she dyed her hair. She’s a hairdresser and aspiring model. He’s not going to pick her.” Et cetera.) We watched one Law & Order and one CSI-I-forget-where. We watched an old West Wing and another Law & Order. Jill’s contractions got closer together but not a lot. The nurses came more often but mostly just offered not especially encouraging encouragement. “You’re doing fine,” and, “Keep hanging in there.”
“Like I was going to quit and go home,” Jill fumed. “I’ve decided to keep it inside actually. Thanks. Maybe I’ll try again in a few weeks.” She was getting cranky. Understandable. Katie and I, meanwhile, were getting bored and tired and cramped in the small hospital room. I was having fantasies about my very own bed, about going home and closing the windows, dumping the food, cleaning up a little, and getting a decent night’s sleep. I hadn’t had one in weeks because of the studying. I figured once this baby was born, I wouldn’t sleep ever again. So this seemed like a good night for it. Jill was not at the moment in need of hand-holding anyway. She was dozing. The whole thing had gone from holy shit to feeling as mundane as waiting for your life to change forever possibly can. Katie and I flipped a coin to see who got to go home and who got to stay. I won.
I put my hand on Jill’s forehead. She opened her eyes sleepily. “I’m thinking of going home and getting some sleep for a couple hours, get some things ready. I’m ten minutes away if things change.”
“You’re leaving?” Jill, panicked, propped herself up on her elbows. Looked desperate, positively desperate, to come home with me.
“Nothing’s happening,” I said. “I thought I’d go home, clean up, come back in a little bit.”
“Don’t leave me here,” she whispered. “Please? I don’t want to stay here waiting either, but you don’t see me leaving.” Katie rolled her eyes at me, but we both stayed. Katie climbed in bed beside Jill. I curled up across two folding chairs. None of us really slept. It was good practice I guess. By about four A.M., the contractions were three minutes apart, and Jill wasn’t sleeping through or even around them anymore. She was eight centimeters dilated when the nurse came in to check at 4:45. By quarter to six, they had decided it was time to start pushing.
You have seen this part. Maybe you’ve given birth yourself or witnessed someone you love doing so. But even if not, you’ve seen this part like I had, on TV, in movies. Usually, real life is nothing like TV, but in this case, it was exactly like what they show there. Jill grunted and screamed and sweat and cried a lot, squeezed my hand and Katie’s, complained of thirst, pain, and exhaustion. She was very brave. She was beautiful and also, you know, not. The baby crowned slowly, emerged sticky and red and covered in white, clumpy wet. It was just as you imagine.
The story they don’t tell on TV is the one of the hand-holder, and it’s because it’s almost as scary but far less gallant. I was terrified. I was worried all that predawn morning and all the night before, but when they finally started, when we braced against her and pushed her knees back by her shoulders and the doctors and nurses came with all the lights and tools and just-in-case equipment, it was fear like I had never known. I was not excited. I was not in awe. I was simply terrified. My heart was beating so fast, so hard, it was difficult to think, hard to keep standing. I was afraid without words, and I am never without words. Jill squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back, just as hard. The baby came out and cried; Jill lay back and cried; I stood there still holding on to her and sobbed, not from miracle, not from relief, but because the fear still did not abate. I can’t explain it, or maybe it’s just that I won’t. I won’t look at what so terrified me or why. I have a family to take care of after all.
Far, far away, there were smiles all around.
“It’s a boy,” the doctor said.
“A little cliché,” I sniffed with my racing heart.
“It’s a boy, it’s a boy,” Katie was shouting and shouting, dancing almost, yelling at me as if I couldn’t hear her. I nearly couldn’t. Jill was steadying him against her chest with both hands, not so much holding him as pressing him there, face up, as if to keep him from sliding off.
“It’s a boy, it’s a boy,” shouted Katie.
“It’s a boy, it’s a boy,” whispered Jill, otherworldly, and as I swam up up up from someplace very far away and back into the room, my first coherent thought was: holy shit. Followed by: what are we going to do with a boy?
We had called Jill’s mom, Diane, just before her daughter started pushing. Jill did not think it would be fun for her mom to be sitting and waiting through hours and hours and maybe days of early labor. Jill and her mother were very close but in that way where they sometimes wanted to kill each other. Jill’s father left for good before Jill learned to walk; she has no memories of him whatsoever and only the dimmest of impressions. Diane had nothing nice to say to her baby girl about her father, so she said nothing at all. And so until she went away to college, for Jill, it was always just the two of them. She admired her mother when she thought about it, was glad her mom was home for dinner many nights. But also it was something she grew up with and so considered normal. As a kid, she thought her friends’ families were strange, overly large and overly present, crammed into crowded houses with too many rooms and too many people. Then she went to college and took gender studies and learned with academic remove the struggles of single parents, the rigging of the system, and it was a familiar revelation. She recognized her mom and herself but as if in a clouded mirror or through something gauzy. Statistics never quite fit. Someone else’s story is always worse. Still, Jill felt guilty about how hard her mom had worked and struggled, how much she’d given up, while Jill, her nascent-feminist only daughter, had failed to notice. When she called her mother from school in tears near the end of her first year to apologize, insofar as that was even possible, for taking all her mother’s efforts so for granted, her mother, silent and incredulous, finally squeaked out, “You mean you didn’t notice? All those years?”
“No,” Jill whispered, mortified, sorry to the tips of her toes.
“Everything we did without? Everything we did alone? How much I had to work? How close we came to not making it? You weren’t thinking about that all the time?” Diane asked.
“I wasn’t, Mom. I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Jill sobbed.
And there was silence on the other end until her mother finally burst out, “Oh thank God!” Jill was speechless. Later, when she’d recover
ed, Diane added, “I wasn’t so sad about what I had to do without. Who needs new clothes when you come home to such a beautiful daughter? But I was so worried about you feeling hungry or alone or sad about what other girls had that you didn’t. When you said you didn’t notice? Shit, that was the best news I ever heard.”
Jill knew that there was more to this story, that her mother must have given up her own dreams, that with the money Diane saved so her daughter could go to college, she could have gone to college herself. So Jill made sure to make it worth it—two majors, two minors, and no plans to be done with academia anytime soon. When she finished school, she decided she wasn’t going to graduation. She thought the cap and gown ugly and extravagant, the ceremony beside the point. She told her mother she’d hang out with friends until the end of graduation weekend then pack up and come home. They could celebrate quietly, just the two of them. It took Diane a while to understand. “Do you mean to tell me you don’t think you’re going to your graduation?” she finally asked.
“Exactly,” said Jill. “It’s stupid. It’s not important to me.”
The Atlas of Love Page 7