Fire & Water (18 page)

The clear June day had shrouded itself in the veil of evening. From the breakfast nook, through the diamond-shaped, leaded glass windows, we could see the sherbet sky to the west and the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge to the east. The green fingers of the Marin Headlands reached toward us from the north.

The house’s grandeur made it difficult to think of as my home. Jake placed my collection of birds’ eggs on the mantle, including the newest I’d found in Japan, and set the pictures of my mother and the rest of my pub family beside them. The simple objects gave me the comfort of familiarity.

“Tell me about your day,” Jake said as he pushed his plate away. He pulled my swollen feet into his lap and kneaded the fatigue away. My daytime world was filled with the bright white light of the OR and hospital corridors. Each night, by candlelight and starlight, Jake listened to the stories of my days. He listened to the details of surgeries, the hospital gossip, and about the children who were my patients.

“Simone is lots better,” I told him. “I got to assist while she got her heart valve transplant. It was amazing to see her fingers and toes turn pink when her blood flow improved. You should have seen her mother when we came out of the OR with the good news.”

Jake smiled and kneaded the arch of my foot. “Simone, that’s a pretty name.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Let’s pick the baby’s name.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Jake had a way of reading my thoughts. “I do sort of have an idea for a boy’s name. My mother was Elyse Ryan before she married my dad. It might be kind of special to use her name for a
new
life, a happier life. Do you think that’s weird because of how she died?”

Jake took my other foot into his hands and pressed his thumbs deep into the arch. “I don’t think we should hold it against her that she didn’t want to live in pain.” He looked up at me with such kindness that I felt I could cry. “Elyse would be a strange name for a boy, though.”

I tossed a wadded up dinner napkin toward him. “
Ryan
, you dope.”

His smile formed deep parentheses in his slim cheeks. “I think Ryan works for a girl, too. In fact, I like it better. What will your family think?”

I hesitated. “I sort of ran it by them already.”

Jake tossed the napkin back toward me. “You sneak. Why do I even try to pretend I have any say? The Murphy clan has voted. Ryan it is. Boy or girl.”

He told me of his day, about the flagstone wall he’d built on our steeply sloping hillside and the crew he’d hired to help with the heavy lifting. He described the peppermint, thyme, and lemon basil by their colors, textures, and smells. “Let’s take dessert outside. I hooked up the lighting today.”

Jake pulled me around the garden, eagerly showing off each nook. He carried a brown bag—a surprise dessert, but I’d already picked up the aroma of rich, dark chocolate. He carried the bag as we toured the garden.

The path was covered with gravel of lapis and green glass pebbles tumbled smooth by the sea. It meandered like a shimmering stream down the hill. Perches and patios interrupted the path, some covered with arbors fashioned from driftwood twigs. Each niche was furnished with chairs and swings he’d created out of gnarled branches. Into the joints of the furniture were wedged polished river stones and shells.

Outside of the baby’s nursery, he’d created what he called a “baby garden.” It had already begun to blossom and soon would overflow with velvety lambs’ ear plants, peppery nasturtiums, pussy willow stalks, pineapple mint, and wild strawberries—all meant to delight our child’s every sense. We sat there, amidst the budding plants, and ate almond brownies.

As the light faded, the breeze chilled the night. Jake’s voice turned somber. “Do you think the patients remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Do you think the bodies remember what was done to them under anesthesia? Not consciously. But do you think cutting into the body affects the spirit? That it remembers pain that the body doesn’t actually experience?”

“I try not to let myself think of that,” I said. “It would kill me to think I was hurting those babies.” But even as I spoke, I knew the truth. Surgeons don’t like to ask themselves these questions. We prefer to be technicians as we work—cool scientists using our skills to do what is necessary to remedy ailments and thwart diseases. We anesthetize bodies and dull memories so that the human hosts of the puzzles we must solve neither experience nor interfere with our work. We omit the more grisly details in our descriptions of what the surgeries will entail: the seared flesh, taped eyelids, restrained limbs, the cruel hooks and blades, and clamps of metal instruments used on tender tissues. We shield ourselves from their faces. Drape all but what we must see to get the job done.

Jake’s question would not allow me to omit the truth I’d always feared. “The spirit knows what the body forgets.” I swallowed hard. “I’ve seen it on their faces.”

* * *

Each night of that summer, we’d climb the stairs and wrap ourselves around each other. My changing body grew even more sensitive to Jake’s touch. Through our open window we breathed the salty air and listened to the foghorns moaning in the distant sea. Our liquid rhythm mimicked the undulating swells of the waves until we drifted off to sleep. I awoke each day to the Spanish chatter of Jake talking to the yard crew he’d hired, and I felt the cool, empty space on Jake’s side of the bed.

The garden was complete by midsummer, and I noticed around that time that Jake had begun keeping notes in a leather-bound notebook. He kept it in his back pocket and scribbled and sketched into its pages many times each day. Curiosity made me sneak peeks. He wrote and drew without constraints of direction or legibility. His print swirled around the pages, flowing more like water than words. Like islands, drawings interrupted the river of words. Soon dozens of jam-packed notebooks appeared around the house. I found them tucked between cereal boxes or discarded on the closet floor, disregarded as soon as they were filled.

As the Indian summer days of September arrived, the garden became a bursting, flowering testament to Jake’s labors, and my body blossomed right along with it. I started going up the stairs alone at night. “I’ll be up in a little while,” Jake would say, and then I’d find him in the atrium the next morning wearing his same clothing.

One morning I was shocked to realize how thin and haggard he’d grown. “You’ve got to get some sleep,” I pleaded, “You’re going to get sick. Look how thin you’re getting.” As I grew rounder and my appetite more voracious, Jake grew leaner and his complexion more gray.

He looked up from his notebook. “I’m sorry. It’s just when I get an image I sort of have to go with it, you know?”

“I guess I can lose you for a little while for the sake of art. But would you eat something nutritious?” I donned a poor Yiddish accent. “Maybe some chicken soup?”

He pulled me close and rubbed the rounding bump of my tummy with his open palm. “I’ll eat some soup,
Bubbie
. For you.”

* * *

I started watching Jake more closely over the next weeks. His lithe frame had become taught and bony. His lean face grew gaunt, the hollows under his cheeks deepening in shadow. He wore storm clouds under his eyes. His hair grew into a long, wild, unruly mass. A scraggly beard appeared in uneven patches, and he wore the same clothes for days at a time.

I often rose in the middle of the night to find him hunched over his worktable. His face within inches of its pages, he’d scratch furiously in a notebook with a stubby pencil.

“You need some rest,” I finally said one night at three in the morning, handing him a cup of tea. I tugged at one of his curls. “And a haircut.”

He didn’t move. I repeated myself. “You’re exhausted.”

“Me? No, never better. Look at this.” He splayed his notebook out for me to see. Scrawled in every direction were words and pictures that made no sense. “Do you see it? I’ve got an idea for how to get perfect sounds,” he said. Then he dipped his head back to his page like a hungry dog gnawing a bone.

“The baby is kicking a lot,” I said, nudging my belly against him. While his left hand still scribbled, his right stroked my tummy. We’d found out at our last ultrasound that Ryan was a girl, and I could feel her kick a reply to her father’s touch. Jake turned and kissed my stomach, then darted to another table.

“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to do surgery,” I said. “Ryan seems to be coming between me and my patients in the OR.”

Jake picked up two broken pieces of rock and stood clacking them together and pausing, then making hasty notes in his book. He picked up another pair of rocks and banged them, followed by another scurry to make a notation.

“Jake, are you listening to me?” He began to search through cupboards for a pallet and paints. He sat down and began squeezing colors from tubes of paint onto the pallet. Had he stopped finding me attractive with my swollen belly and rounding hips? The distance between us felt like a growing, rotten thing—dank and dark. When I left the studio, he didn’t even look up.

* * *

One night in late September, I came home late from the hospital. I’d called home several times throughout the day, but had only reached the answering machine. Darkness had fallen, and San Francisco’s summer fog had crawled between the houses and the leaning cypress trees. When I pulled up to our house, not a single light shone from any of the windows. No cooking fragrances met me at the door. No fire blossomed in the fireplace. Only the damp chill of the rooms greeted me.

“Jake!” I called. The echo of my voice against the vaulted ceilings replied. I flipped on light switches, looking for a note on the kitchen counter, but I found nothing. I wandered through the rooms and up to our bedroom, where I slid my swollen feet out of my shoes and into a pair of slippers. Then I heard the ear-stinging clang of metal against rock coming from the back of the house and detected the smell of burning leaves.

I called Jake’s name from the balcony. All of the landscape lights were on, but I couldn’t see him. More harsh pings reverberated from the slope of the yard. I made my way downstairs, outside, and down the path, holding on to the smooth cedar rail to balance my waddling gait.

Jake was halfway down the hill, naked, mud-covered, and cursing. He’d rigged floodlights that blasted the hillside and him with white light, making him appear like an overexposed photograph against the darkness. His hair hung in heavy, sweaty curls around his face. A small fire burned just off the path nearby, and he swung a huge sledgehammer against a stack of stones. A deafening ping rang through the night air as his hammer found its mark.

“Jake, what are you doing? My God, why are you naked?”

The hammer swung again and was met with a loud crack and the sound of rock crumbling to the ground. A dust cloud rose. “There, you sonofabitch!”

“Jake!”

He jumped, falling back a little and nearly losing his footing. “Jesus! You scared the hell out of me.”

The fog wrapped me in a cold, moist blanket, making Jake’s nakedness seem even more absurd. I surveyed the once-idyllic yard to see rock piles and pulled-up vines surrounded by muddy puddles. The willow furniture lay tossed in a heap. “What have you done?”

He climbed up from the side of the hill to where I stood. His arms waved wildly as he described his vision. His pungent body odor stung my nostrils. “It was all wrong, Kat. It was lifeless. The yard has to have movement and sound. I see that now. We have earth. We have sky. What we need is fire and water. Fire and water together. It’ll be
amazing
.”

My head pounded with confusion. I pulled my sweater around me, trying in vain to cover my bulging belly. “It was perfect. It was the most beautiful yard I’ve ever seen. Have you lost your mind?”

“It was dead. DEAD! Now I’m going to put life into it.”

“You sound like Dr. Frankenstein.” I tried to laugh, but my attempt at a joke didn’t sound so funny. The wildness in Jake’s eyes terrified me.

“You’ll see, Kat. I’m making waterfalls everywhere. They’ll tumble from each of the plateaus. Each one will have a different pitch because of the size, shape, and density of the rocks that the water will flow over and the height of the drop.” Jake clicked two pieces of rock together in his hands and a hollow thud sounded. “See, this is granite. It’s really dense, so the sound will be deader. I’ve got soapstone and lava rock. Those are more hollow. It’ll be a—a—chorus. Yeah, a chorus on the hillside. The heat and crackle of flame will make it multidimensional.” Every movement Jake made was exaggerated and primal—like an animal preparing for a fight. He ran without looking. His limbs flung about as if blown by a hurricane. He ran to a large boulder to make another note in his notebook. Without looking up, he continued to mutter.

His mouth could not spout the words fast enough for his thoughts, and he stammered. He swung his arms. “Imagine water flowing from the Golden Gate. Not real water, of course. That wouldn’t do. But the
illusion
of water. Made of crystals or glass or—yeah, then I’ll have to find a bigger hill. No, not a hill. A mountain. Half Dome in Yosemite. That’s it!”

“Where’s this water going to go, Jake? Don’t we need some kind of a permit for all of this? Some kind of drainage system? We can’t just let water run off the hillside. It’ll erode and cause a mudslide.”