Five Days Left (14 page)

As Mara got sicker and routine tasks started to take her five times as long, Gina spent more and more time in Mara’s office helping, and less and less time at her own desk. As a result, she had to stay later and later, to finish the regular administrative tasks she was responsible for but no longer had time for during the day. Mara’s pleas that Gina enlist help from the temp pool went unheeded; Gina didn’t want to tip people off that she was falling behind because her boss could no longer think straight.

This time last year, at Dr. Thiry’s insistence that she must fit more rest days into her schedule, Mara had dropped down to four days a week at the firm. It killed her to do it. It killed her to admit the reason to Kent, the managing partner, too. And she almost hadn’t. It was so tempting, and it would have been so easy, to claim working-mother guilt as the reason for the request and hide the truth from him for as long as possible. But she hadn’t felt right about it, so she’d let him in on her condition, and
the fact that her doctor had advised she would be more productive if she reduced her schedule to four days and allowed her body and brain to recharge on the fifth.

Kent had been remarkably supportive about it, telling her if she could handle four days, the firm would love to have her for those days. He’d scoffed and waved a hand when she told him she would cover Gina’s overtime out of her own paycheck, since the reason for it was her condition. He’d refused to agree to her request that he change her title on the firm’s masthead from “partner” to the lesser “of counsel,” too, telling her in his view, and that of everyone else at Katon Locke, she would always be a full partner. With Kent’s support and Gina’s help, Mara gushed to Tom that night, she would be able to pull off a four-day schedule indefinitely.

And then, overnight it seemed (although it hadn’t actually happened until last fall), she was suddenly so exhausted by her four days of work that Dr. Thiry ordered her to downgrade to three. Three shorter days, at that—three “baby days,” as she called them—eight to five only, a fraction of the dawn-to-dusk hours she was used to putting in. Not surprisingly, Tom didn’t even want her to do three short days. “Just stop altogether,” he urged. But he knew even as he said it that she would never give up that easily. She talked to Kent again and they agreed she would squeeze out the three-day schedule for as long as her condition would allow.

It allowed six months, until February of this year. At which time, with appalling speed, the woman who used to go for long runs with her husband on weekend mornings could no longer do a simple Downward Dog pose without falling over, could barely hold a coffee cup without spilling, had clumsily allowed a dozen dishes to meet their fate on the kitchen tile. The woman who used to be able to pull off three good days in the office was, without warning, a distant memory.

It was the high CAG score, Mara told Those Ladies. But she didn’t say it to Tom; he didn’t like hearing her talk about it. “It just bloody figures, doesn’t it?” she said to Steph over drinks one night. “Wouldn’t you
know that of all people, I’d be the one to get the overachieving, Type A version of the disease. For once in my life, I’d love to know what it’s like to do something the slow way.”

By the beginning of February, just two months ago, she was struggling to put in one productive day each week. And that’s when Kent cried uncle. He sidled into her office one afternoon, closed the door behind him and said, “Mara, we need to talk.”

It was beyond impressive, how long she’d managed to work, he told her. He would forever consider her the bravest person he’d ever had the honor of knowing. “But I have an entire firm to consider,” he said, his arms waist-high, palms turned to the ceiling. Pleading with her to understand his position. Begging her to forgive him. “I have to think about our clients.”

He couldn’t risk that her condition, which seemed to be racing along much faster suddenly, might cause her to overlook an important deadline on a case, or forget to include a vital argument in a legal brief. “And I know you wouldn’t want that to happen, either,” he said, and his expression showed he believed he was thinking of her, too, and not just the bottom line. “I know you’d never forgive yourself if it did.” If they were in another line of work, he said, one that didn’t rely so heavily on mental acuity . . .

And Mara had stood then, nodding and forcing her lips into a smile and letting him think she did understand, she did think he was considering her in addition to the firm’s profits, she did forgive him, while she gently pushed him out of her office. “I’ll make arrangements with Gina to clear out my things,” she said, before closing the door behind him, locking it, falling to the carpet, curling into the fetal position and crying.

That was it, then. Her career was over. The life she had dreamed of since she was a child, had worked tirelessly toward for four years of undergrad and three years of law school, had screeched to a halt. The titles—lawyer, litigator, partner—she had acted humbly about but felt so proud of no longer applied to her.

It took her two hours to gather the strength to pick herself up off the floor, walk to her desk and call Tom to come to get her. It took her a week to muster up the emotional strength to call Kent and talk through logistics. They agreed she’d stick with her one-day-a-week schedule for as long as it took her to pack up her office, send any old case files to the storage room, and give any still-relevant research files to Steph or her other partners.

At the end of February, she boxed up the last of her personal belongings and said her final goodbye—to her colleagues, to her office, to the career she had lovingly devoted almost twenty years of her life to, and had intended to thrive at for at least that many more. On her final day, she gazed out over Dallas from her window on the thirty-third floor, admiring for the last time the view that had kept her company through endless hours of trial prep, brief writing and research. She studied the thick metal window frame and the latches that held it closed. In under a minute, she thought, she could release the casement, push it free, fit herself through the opening. But she reminded herself of her promise, and told herself she still had more time.

She held it together as she pulled her office door closed behind her for the last time. Smiled through the retirement dinner they threw for her at a swanky restaurant downtown. Nodded graciously at the speeches Kent and the other partners made about her, signaling the inglorious and premature end to a brilliant career. It was only at home that she lost it, first in Tom’s arms, and then weeks later, when it was clearly upsetting him that she was still distraught, in the shower whose thunderous blast, she had gratefully come to realize, drowned out even the loudest weeping.

Scott

Later, Scott wouldn’t remember what he taught his classes for the rest of the day, or what homework he assigned. He had a vague recollection that Pete had come into the classroom for lunch, as he always did, and asked a torrent of questions to elicit the reason why Scott was staring catatonically at the floor. He recalled Pete swearing in a long stream of choice expletives, so he was certain he must have relayed his conversation with Janice, but he couldn’t remember saying the words out loud: “Curtis is gone.”

After school, he walked to his car on autopilot and headed, as was his habit, to Logan. Only when he turned the corner and the school came into view, its masses of children swarming around the playground equipment, lining up for school buses, greeting parents, did he remember he wasn’t picking Curtis up today. Or any day.

He pulled over and watched the little bodies spill from the door to waiting cars and buses and swing sets, scanning each small form for Curtis, each larger one for Janice or LaDania. He didn’t spot them, and he waited awhile longer for them to come out later, maybe with the principal or Miss Keller to accompany them, keep Curtis in line. The playground equipment blurred a little in his vision as he realized he had missed them. Not that seeing the boy from two hundred feet away
would have made up for not taking him home. But it would have been something.

He hit the radio button and a Motown song came on. He wasn’t a crier, but hearing Smokey again so soon might be the thing that set off the tracks of his own tears. He hit the button again and drove the rest of the way in silence.

Laurie was waiting for him in the front hall when he walked in and she threw herself at him. “Janice called me. She told me everything. I’m so angry with LaDania I could—” She shook her head, evidently not willing to vocalize what she was tempted to do to Curtis’s mother. “She said she was going to come later for his things, and I told her to come right away instead. So you didn’t have to be here. She left a few minutes ago. What can I do?”

Bring him back,
Scott wanted to say. But there was what he wanted her to do, and what she wanted him to say. And a vast chasm between the two. “Maybe a drink?” he said.

“A beer, or something stronger?” She looked at him closely. “Something stronger coming up,” she said. “Why don’t you sit in the family room and I’ll bring it to you?”

Moments later, she lowered herself to the couch beside him, handing the glass over with one hand and patting his knee with the other. “One bit of good news. Janice told me LaDania said yes to Monster Trucks. You can get him early on Sunday morning, drop him back off whenever. At least you two will have your last big day, right?”

He gave her the slight smile she was waiting for and took a sip.

“I thought I’d order in,” she said. “Thai? I figure the last thing you’ll want is the spaghetti we were—”

“Thai would be good. Thanks. You want to sit, let me call it in?”

“I already called. It’ll be here in an hour. Want me to turn on the TV?”

“I might take a nap upstairs, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.”

“You want to come?”

She shook her head and reached for a book sitting on the coffee table. He recognized it from the tall stack of baby books in the corner. “I want to read a little. I’ll call you when it’s here.”

Upstairs, he fought and quickly lost the bet with himself that he could walk past Curtis’s room without looking in. The room hadn’t looked this tidy since before Curtis moved in, and despite the many times Scott had nagged the boy to pick up the clothes and toys that constantly littered the floor, the lack of little-boy detritus made him feel sick. The closet door was closed, and he guessed Laurie had done that on purpose, to spare him from seeing the empty shelves and hangers inside. She had sent Janice away with two overstuffed duffel bags, she’d told him. She focused on clothes first but filled any leftover space with as many toys as she could.

Flopping onto the bed, he leaned against the headboard and slowly swiveled his head around the room. Commit it to memory now, he thought, before Laurie makes her way inside with cans of paint and fabric for curtains suitable for a baby girl. Take it all in. This is what the room looked like when you had a son.

Every item in the room came with a memory.
Stuart Little
, which had surprisingly not been crammed into a duffel but faced him from the bookshelf, came with a thousand. A section of the shelf was empty, so it was clear Laurie had sent some books. Had she kept this one on purpose, given how much sentimental value she knew it held for him? It was nice of her, he thought, but the little man should have the book, and the photo inside. He would mail it to LaDania’s address tomorrow.

On the windowsill above the bookshelf he spotted a few green army men, detached now from the rest of the infantry, which had been piled in a heap on the city-map rug earlier today but must have been packed into a duffel. He’d mail those guys, too. Maybe he should take a more thorough inventory of the remaining contents of the room; maybe send a pretty large package to the kid.

He’d spare the boy a long, emotional letter about how much he missed him, but he’d tape a note to the army men, something to let Curtis know
Scott was thinking about him. Smiling, he thought of the perfect thing to write:
Would you rather shove these army guys up your nose or melt them into liquid and drink them?

As he stared at the green plastic toys, he heard Curtis’s voice announcing their next mission, which always involved rescuing the area-rug city from its latest invaders—the toy dinosaurs, or some Lego monster he had built for the purpose, or the most dreaded enemy of all: Scott, aka the Giant Shoes. “Now, listen up, men, I’ve got bad news. I know you
thought
you were going to have a little more R&R tonight, but the fact
is
, the Giant Shoes just showed up, and we’re all probably going to be ordered to go to a
lights-out
situation. You know I’ve got a plan, though, like I always do. And let’s face it, the Giant Shoes aren’t the smartest enemy on the planet.”

But the commander had fallen pretty quickly that night, Scott recalled, as, faux-offended, the Giant Shoes stepped gently on half the green unit and pretended their next landing place would be the commander’s hand. The commander jumped up and onto the safety of his bed, where the Giant Hands, evil companion of the Giant Shoes, proceeded with the Tickle Torture until the commander shrieked his surrender and agreed to go to sleep.

Standing, Scott went to the window and picked up the three army men, turning them over in his hand and hearing Curtis’s voice bark commands, reports from “the front,” strategies for attacking or retreating. On the other hand, Scott thought, sticking the plastic toys in his pocket, how many soldiers did the boy need? He wouldn’t miss three. But in case he asked about them, Scott would keep them in his bedside table drawer for a while. He could always mail them later if requested, and if not, he thought Commander Jackson would approve of his installing a small armed unit in the drawer to protect his watch and pocket change.

For that matter, he wondered, stooping to lift
Stuart Little
from the shelf, did it make sense to mail the book? What if the boy lost interest in the mouse, as surely he would? What if it sat unread in some closet at
LaDania’s, only to be tossed unsentimentally into a garbage bag one day, either by a mother who was unaware of its significance or by a boy who was suddenly too cool for such an immature story? What if the photo met a similar fate? And it would, of course.

He slid the paper out and, as Curtis had done only the night before, traced an index finger along the outline of the two subjects. It was more like one two-headed subject; they were pressed so close together in their nightly tuck-in pose that where one ended and the other began wasn’t readily discernible. He thought about the somber expression on Curtis’s face when he’d held the photo the night before, then imagined the look of embarrassment the boy might wear a year from now, on seeing how he used to cuddle at bedtime with a man he wasn’t even related to. Of course, the picture would find its way into a refuse bin if he were to mail it.

The thought made Scott queasy but he chastised himself to cut the drama. How long could a child be expected to remember his ninth year? Closing his eyes, he tried to remember one thing he’d done when he was that age. There was the time he received a Detroit Lions jersey for Christmas and insisted on wearing it over the suit his mother made him wear to church. Or was he nine then, or ten? He pictured his elementary school and struggled to remember where his second-grade classroom was. Top floor, toward the front—or was that the year he was on the ground floor, near the office? He stopped the exercise without putting himself through the paces of trying to recall his teacher or the names of any of his friends.

This year had been unforgettable for Scott, but that didn’t guarantee it would be the same for the boy. In fact, the better bet was that this year wouldn’t carry a fraction of the importance to Curtis. Sure, Scott was a hero figure right now, but what about five years from now? He would still be deeply affected by the boy’s absence from this Royal Oak bedroom then, but over in Detroit, would the name Scott Coffman evoke hero worship, or just a cloudy memory?

He tucked the book in his back pocket. It would join the army unit in his bedside table drawer.

Deciding it was best not to push himself, he left the closet door closed and took in the rest of the room. Laurie would keep the rocker in here for the baby, and that was fine with him. It was there he had honed his nurturing skills—rocking Curtis one night when a painful earache kept him up. “I’m too old to be rocked to sleep,” the child complained weakly before resting his head on Scott’s shoulder and nudging the man’s arm until Scott wrapped it around the boy and pulled him close.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Scott whispered.

He couldn’t guess how many hours he’d spent in the chair over the past twelve months, holding spelling lists while Curtis stood on the city rug, trying to say the right letters in the right order, or listening to some wild tale the boy was telling about what he’d done at school. Most of the time, the stories needed to be acted out, with the bed, the floor underneath it, the interior of the closet and Scott’s lap all composing the stage. A few times Curtis had been sick, or homesick for his mother, or inexplicably sad, and had asked Scott to “just be with me until I fall asleep.” On those nights, Scott balanced classroom papers on his knee or chatted with LaksMom and the others on the forum, often describing the sight and sounds of the boy dozing a few feet away.

“You’re a born father,” 2boys had commented once, in an uncharacteristic display of sincerity. It was before Scott and Laurie had seen the positive sign on the pregnancy test. “I know it’s gonna happen for you someday,” 2boys wrote. “The universe can’t waste a guy like you.”

That was the night Scott suggested the idea of an older-child adoption to Laurie. LaksMom had warned him that the cost of baby adoption wasn’t unlike that of a European sports car. They’d spent their sports car money on IVF by then, though, with another installment left to go. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t have the option of holding out for adopting a baby.

But aside from the money, it was a no-brainer to adopt an older boy or girl, in Scott’s view, a local kid from the local foster care organization. Rescue a kid who might otherwise languish in the system, and in return you have an instant family, no waiting. Win-win. After all, the point was to be parents, right? The point wasn’t how the child came to them in the first place.

It turned out being a parent wasn’t the only point for Laurie. She wanted to be the parent of her own child. Adoption wasn’t Plan B for her, she told him—it was Plan Z. All stops needed to have been pulled, and pulled again, before she’d consider adopting. Adopting a baby, that is. One too young to come with any significant emotional baggage. Once a child was past a year or two, in her view, it was too late—the emotional bags had been packed, and often to the point of bursting.

“They don’t take those kids out of happy homes, you know,” she told him. She had heard horror stories about foster care kids with attachment issues, emotional walls, night terrors. About lying, stealing. Kids constantly testing rules, pushing boundaries.

And she had dreamed of babies. Pictured them, planned for them, designed a nursery for them in her mind. One after another in the little room at the top of the stairs, until they were big enough for a toddler bed in one of the other rooms. And that’s where she was keeping her sights set—on chubby, pink babies.

He should have left it at that. That’s what Pete told him later, when Scott described the crying, the slamming doors, the week he spent sleeping on the couch. The things that could never be unsaid.

Think of all the disappointment she had been through, Pete said, and how amazing she had been about it. Did Scott have any idea how fortunate he was? Hadn’t he heard about the potential infertility fallout—wives blaming husbands, sex lives coming to a complete standstill, marriages falling apart? Why, Pete asked, would Scott push his astoundingly good luck by continuing to pressure her on this?

But he couldn’t help himself. He saw kids in his head, five and ten
years old and never knowing what it is to feel wanted, to belong. And he saw what became of those kids later—he drove past them every day on his way home from work. Rough kids with vacant expressions, eyeing him at the stoplight, casting up and down the street for cops, calculating whether they had time to hit him up for some money, sell him a sack of weed, knock his head into his steering wheel and take his wallet, his car. Kids who could have turned out so differently.

So he had pushed, long after he should have stopped. Even if IVF worked this time, he argued, maybe they should adopt an older child as well, or start taking in foster children. She’d have her baby, and they’d also be helping some kids who had no one.

It hadn’t led anywhere good. He was the one who felt responsible for saving every neglected child in Detroit, she told him. Not her. And she resented the implication that she should feel the way he did. That she was somehow wrong, selfish, for wanting what she wanted. For not sharing his savior complex. “Goddamn savior complex” was actually how she put it.