Anywhere But Here (75 page)

I wish I could have brought her here when she was even younger, so she wouldn’t have all these various feelings and yearnings for the midwest and her middle-class roots, but that was her father, not me. I never wanted to stay there. But he left. And now I’ve got my station wagon ready for my grandchildren. They’ll be all this—all Beverly Hills. They’ll be born into it—thanks to me.

When I was pregnant with her, we lived in Egypt. I didn’t know anything, I was so young. But her father wanted to have a baby and so I thought, okay, maybe that would help him, settle him down. His family was there. They thought it would be wonderful. He had backing. Of course, later he changed his mind about that, too. But I’m over him now too finally. I think I could meet him again now and it wouldn’t mean anything to me.

I lost so much weight, I was down to eighty-six pounds at seven months and I flew back. I wanted to be home with my mother. And so I could have her here in America with the very best equipment and hospitals in the world.

You carry a baby in the womb for nine months and then, when they’re grown up, they call you collect, when they remember. She has her own life. And that’s okay. I’ve learned to be patient. “Teach only love for that is what you are.” The ups and down; I live with it. And I’ve got a lot ahead of me and a lot to be proud of. I know: she is the reason I was born.

ALSO BY
M
ONA
S
IMPSON

A REGULAR GUY

A Regular Guy
is the portrait of Tom Owens, a legendary, quintessentially American entrepreneur trapped by the age he helped to define. When his long-lost daughter reappears in his life, she helps transform his odd constellation of friends and lovers into a strangely cohesive family and helps him discover his true self.

“Stunning … Simpson takes on—and reinvents—many of America’s essential myths.”

—Michiko Kakutani,
The New York Times

Vintage Contemporaries
Fiction/0-679-73738-8

Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).