Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (12 page)

“Half the world lives like that.”

“And you’re willing to be in that half?”

“I just heard. I don’t know what I’m willing to do.”

“What do you mean she’s not like me?”

“You could have a child on your own. I wouldn’t worry about you.”

“You have no idea how wrong you are.”

We sat in silence. On top of everything else, I was shocked that anyone would think I could raise a child on my own. I barely kept my own life together. That I was sitting there seemed evidence enough.

“Okay, well. I need to get going,” I said.

I took my mug to the kitchen. I started crying, the blurred vision a comfort. He put his hands on my shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t apologize. It’s just as well.”

I didn’t turn around. He took his hands away and left behind cold handprints. I could still smell us and feel our lovemaking. The universe was mocking.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“No. Please don’t say that.”

Rex’s toenails clicked on the stone floor, the door opened and closed. Just like that. Given and taken. In an instant, a faulty altitude reading, a mountain in the darkness. I stood frozen at the sink until I heard the gate latch.

“I should have known from the second I met him,” I said. “A truck driver, what was I thinking?”

Karin had come right away.

“Does it matter what he does?” she asked.

“It feels like it now.”

“It sounds like he’s a good guy, he’s stepping up,” she said.

“I know, I know. I get it. It’s all very noble.”

“What’s the alternative? We can’t have it both ways.”

“I can’t have it any way.”

“That sounds a little crazy. You have Steve.”

“Steve and I don’t have that. He said he doesn’t have it with her either.”

“Would you really want children with him?”

“It’s the first time it felt like the right idea. I’ve never felt that before. It was like, I don’t know, that’s all some part of me wanted.”

“I know, but would you be okay taking a truck driver to parties?”

“He taught biology, he’s not just a truck driver.”

“He is now, that’s what people would see. Your mother sure wouldn’t like it.”

“It’s not my mother’s life, “ I said.

“I’m just being realistic. You’re the one who brought up his job.”

“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t gotten pregnant with Oscar?”

“I don’t know what would have happened to us. But my parents would like their own lives better.”

“They love your kids.”

“They’d love them more if their father was a white guy from the country club.”

We were quiet again.

“He said he wouldn’t worry if it was me who was pregnant,” I said.

“Because? It would still be just as much his. It’s not just about the kids. It’s a lot of work.”

“I don’t know. He says she’s still a girl.”

“There’s no way to even begin to make sense of that. Sometimes I think it’s the girls who have it easy; that’s all they want.”

“I can’t imagine having a child on my own. I can barely imagine it with someone. Steve’s been talking about having children.”

“Steve? He’s never struck me as the father-type.”

“What does Oscar think of all this?”

“He wants you to have it, that energy. But he told me that if I ever considered taking the kids, he’d lock me in a closet until they’re grown. He understands about raising your own kids. It would make him nuts to think another man was raising his kids, even a little bit.”

“He’s a good guy. Let’s go, it helps to work. I don’t want to sit at home.”

We locked up and headed downtown. My phone rang, A. Watts. I didn’t want a message from him. I hit answer and end with two quick jabs. I did not want to talk. My ex-husband used to talk until I wanted to cry with confusion and frustration. I did not want tenderness, or pointless silences. We didn’t need talk then, and we don’t need it now. I glanced at the screen and realized I hadn’t heard from Steve after his dinner with Eric and Anna.

Shooting was over; everyone was laid, dead or got a cookie. We started the tedious process of packing up and labeling everything to be sent to prop storage on the lot. Over the next week we would clean up our files of photos and notes to be buried somewhere with all the other dead television shows. If someone two thousand years down the road could figure out how to read our flash drives, they could recreate Layla’s world, not to be confused with the real world, or maybe it is. I was beginning to feel like Vampire Chick. I’d been snotty with creepy David, but I didn’t want to spend my life rubbing them out alone either. I needed an agent to jump down the throat of who ever was writing my sex life.

Steve left me a message that he’d caught a flight home a day early and was headed over to my place to swim some laps; he’d pick up dinner. He’d had a great time with Eric and Anna. Eric had left a message that they approved of Steve, even after he’d taken them to Chinatown for cooked chicken feet, not something you see every day in La Jolla.

I was looking forward to seeing Steve, happy that he was back so I could stop thinking about what had happened, and rededicate myself to getting on with my life and his education. I walked in the front door to him sitting in the chair Stroud and I had rocked the night before, drinking a Mexican beer.

“Welcome home,” I said. “Did you swim yet?”

I went over to give him a kiss but he held his arm out to keep me away.

“You drink bad Mexican beer now?” he asked.

“A friend stopped by, he brought it.”

“A friend?”

“Well, not a friend really.”

I started the story of Grandma’s hearse, but he cut me off.

“Eric and Anna told me about it.”

I shrugged, “So you know. He came into town and I took him to dinner. I felt like I owed him that much.”

“What else did you owe him?”

“What do you mean?”

Cold guilt was making my lungs contract. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t imagine Eric and Anna being anything but polite and discrete.

“You just couldn’t wait could you?”

“Wait for what?”

“Until we figured things out.”

He got up and put his empty bottle on the counter next to a take-out bag. He didn’t look at me again.

“You should take out your trash.” He walked out the door.

I watched him walk up the steps and out the gate. Take out the trash? I didn’t know what he was talking about. I looked in the kitchen trash. There was nothing but take out containers and a few empty beer bottles. I went in the bathroom. The trashcan had a half dozen empty and crinkled up condom wrappers and the empty box folded flat. I saw a flash of Stroud doing that after he had emptied the rest of them in the top drawer of the nightstand. I sat down on the toilet seat and stared at the image. I tried to imagine how Steve had felt. I don’t know what I would have done were it me. Thrown it at him maybe, but probably not. Presbyterians don’t throw things. I felt sick to have done that to him.

There was no way to undo it. I couldn’t think of one thing I could say to him that could put a dent in the picture he was carrying around. I got my phone to call Karin and sat down in the chair. I couldn’t punch in her number; I couldn’t talk. I was barely breathing. My throat felt swollen shut. My skin itched like I was breaking out in hives.

I searched under the bed where I found two more wrappers. There was one under the chair. I wondered if he’d noticed that. I emptied all the trashcans, and carried the bags outside to the big can.

I swam laps, breathing on both sides; it’s like a meditation. I pushed myself harder every time thoughts of Stroud, and of Steve holding that vision, tried to insinuate themselves into my brain. I stopped, my heart slammed. Despite the cool air, my face felt on fire like a shameful blush. My core systems were beating their drums while my brain went off to war with itself. I floated under the starless sky, my mind trapped in circles of thought that led nowhere. It was engaged in feints and skirmishes to avoid feeling hollow shame and futility. I’d felt this when I was married. One of the only things that got me through those days and nights was telling myself that it wouldn’t always be like this. At the moment, all these years out, all I could hear was that it would. It would always be like this.

I went to bed. I hadn’t changed the sheets; they were steeped in the dense odor of us. The bed pulsed with lust and fresh humiliation. My stomach was in a knot. I stripped it down and put on clean sheets. I had to get up a second time and throw the pile outside. Even across the room, I could smell us. I finally stopped trying to sleep at 5:00 a.m. and booted up my computer. Eric had sent pictures that someone had taken of them all eating in New York. There was one of the three of them in the back of a cab; the driver had taken it from a crazy angle. They all looked happy, and grown up, and like they knew what they were doing.

I made coffee and ate a banana so I could take a painkiller. I had terrible cramps. My mother said having a baby had put an end to those for her. I’d always been plagued by stomach clutching, couch writhing cramps. Not the best reason to have a baby, but on these days, it hit the top of the chart.

It was hours before I needed to be at work, so I went to the car wash. I paged through a soggy year-old
People
about people who make a living airing out their tawdry shit in public. I over-tipped the man with the silver-capped teeth who dried my car. I got to the set so early the catering people were just setting up. I started in dismantling Vampire Chick’s set; I felt a special tenderness for her. Karin arrived on time and found me working.

She looked at my face. “It will pass. When does Steve come home?”

“Steve’s back. He came home a day early.”

She sat down on the couch and looked off into space while I told her the story.

“I feel like I got you into this,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I got myself into this.”

“But I kept going on about calling him and hot sex.”

“I’d love to blame you, believe me. But as my last therapist said, if I blame you then you’re in control of my life.”

“She was talking about your mother.”

“Okay fine. It’s your fault.”

“What a clusterfuck,” she said.

“That pretty much covers both bases.”

She glanced at me over that remark. I wasn’t completely gone.

“Are you going to call Steve?”

“And say what? Why’d you come home early and look in my trash? I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”

“I can. He wouldn’t take your call anyway.”

We spent a subdued afternoon working. I was pounding down painkillers.

I spent the evening cleaning house. I washed the sheets again, scrubbed the bathroom, and vacuumed and mopped up every trace of dog hair and ash. I opened the windows and burned sage. I cleaned out the fireplace and even the refrigerator. I drank beer and listened to Vivaldi traverse the four seasons in endless cycles. It sounded neutral, even though Steve and I had heard a chamber quartet perform it under the blue vaulted and gold starred ceiling of the Chapel of St. Chappell in Paris. The stone floors had been cold but I’d insisted on wearing a skirt with new curvy-heeled silk shoes. I knew he liked the look. I had caught a cold. I took a shower and opened a second beer; it helped pry loose the fingers dug in and squeezing my belly.

I got on-line and deleted all the jokes, inspirational angel crap and cute puppies. I dumped the it’s-a-beautiful-world slideshow with Japanese subtitles, bad dissolves and sappy music. Out went my most ardent suitor, a guy in Nigeria who still wanted to give me sic million dolars US$ if I’d just send him a few bucks. I was left with nothing but pictures of smiling, well-adjusted grown-ups eating chicken feet.

I recognized the shrill place I was sliding toward. I’d been there after my divorce. Even a bad relationship leaves the yawning void. I could end up like a bird that accidentally flies into the house and, frantic to get away, keeps banging against the window, injuring itself on the promise of freedom. It’s the place where you cut off your hair, exhaust your friends with second-guessing, and try to force the passage of time by taking up short-lived hobbies, drinking too much at parties, and no joy fucking random, ideally unavailable, men. I would call Margaret first thing in the morning and get busy with work and India. Maybe I could short circuit the impulse to take up wood burning.

Our work would be finished in a week and I couldn’t afford to spend time unemployed. I had rent to pay and a staggering repair bill for a car I hated. The last thing I wanted now was to lose my home base. Despite the Stroud debacle, home still felt safe. I’d sublet so I wouldn’t have to give it up.

Everyone had talked at lunch about where they were headed for their winter break. I still wanted to go to Hawaii. Might as well pull the scab off my Visa bill along with the rest of my life. I did a quick search on the off chance I could find something. Nope, not at that late date.

The next day we jammed all morning. I called Margaret over lunch to tell her my decision about India.

“How’s Steve taking it?” she asked.

“Steve and I broke up.”

“We didn’t think he’d take it well.”

“We didn’t break up over India. I strayed off the path.”

“We wondered about that too.”

“You wondered if I was straying? I only took a few steps. I barely knew it.”

“We wondered if it was enough. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it. I’m so happy you’ll be with us. What an adventure.”

Ed was going with us. He’d started going with Margaret after he retired from production at one of the networks. He found a hobby in every location. He cooked for us. He entertained visiting family and friends who never understood we really were working. He kept the home fires burning, so to speak. Margaret was in her mid-70s; it would probably be her last big foreign country work. They were going to New York for the holidays and then we would put in a month working in L.A. before heading to Delhi. I needed to contact the production office to set up the logistics.