Second Nature (26 page)

“Dr. Livingston, this was a mistake, not a plan to defeat my transplant. I’m not nuts and I’m not a schizo and I’m not suicidal. Don’t you dare suggest that I sabotaged myself,” I said. “I won’t put myself in danger. I won’t put my face in jeopardy. This is my fault. But you don’t have to rub it in.”

Livingston said, “I’m sure there’s not a person in the world who would say this is your fault. You have been a model patient. If anything, the fault is utterly our own for not considering the factors that could pertain to a woman so young and, if I may say, so very pretty as you are now.” He narrowed his eyes. “Disneyland apart, I would not, uh, have explicitly prescribed a theme park.”

“And yet that’s not where I got in trouble. Gosh, that’s what they used to call it. Back in the day.”

Livingston stood up. He said he’d paged Hollis, who would be along presently.
Oh, great
, I thought,
great
. Another disapproving mother-age figure who, as an added bonus, never said anything argumentative, so you couldn’t disagree with her. Hollis bent you to her will simply by being aloof, withholding the approval you somehow wanted from her so badly. Eliza had told me as much, that the interns and residents fell all over themselves like performing seals, trying to win a brief nod and a “just so” from Dr. Grigsby.

Dr. Livingston left. I crossed to the bed and lay down.

To my utter disbelief and breathless rage, I realized that I was … sad.

I wanted to call Dr. Livingston back and tell him off.

And then I recognized that this had everything to do with the truth that the body, as I had told myself so often, has a head.

Oh, Vincent
, I thought,
I did it with you, with all the feelings you’re supposed to have when you do that for the purpose it’s intended
. Maybe one of those feelings somehow got into the slipstream of reproductive destiny, and biology decided that I was the woman from the neck down who I can’t ever be from the neck up. Does everyone have regrets, the way Dr. Livingston suggested? Even in California? What if all the chips were not stacked on the side of my face? Would I tell you right now? It would have sounded like the antediluvian ploy for snagging the guy. Surely I had more chops than that. But I didn’t need to have chops. In this fix, I didn’t need to be pro-choice; I was already no-choice. And if there had been a choice? If we were just two mokes who experienced a technical failure? Why would I tell you and make you suffer too? And what if you didn’t care? What if you thought of this like … having your hard drive blow up? Did I really want to know that either?

I glanced at the giant schoolhouse clock and, as I had become adept at doing, immediately corrected for the time it was in California. Five in the evening. A sunny Sunday at the little blue clapboard house across the sandy street from the beach that stretched away to the end of reckoning, so that the mind had to conjure what the eye could not observe.

The silly-assed music began to swell: There we were, Vincent and me, dragging the picnic basket between us, a chunky little kid running ahead, too close to the tickle of the tide … No.

I didn’t want a child. I wanted … maybe a new job. Maybe to be a professor. To go skiing in Utah. Maybe—someday—that kid.

Damn it!

Why in the hell did they give me a whole night to lie here without a good sedative and think morbidly mopey thoughts about a guy?

I sat down on that beach. It was late October. Even the surfers, too dumb and stoned to feel the cold, had gone off to Mexico or Hawaii. The little stand that sold ice cream was boarded up for the winter.

There wasn’t a single person on that strand except one woman, her shoulders lost in a big old stretched-out sweater, her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, her long hair snarled by the rising wind.

She sat looking out to sea. You couldn’t see her face.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“
V
incent,” Beth said. “Are you awake?”

“Now I am,” he said. “What time is it?”

“It’s eight o’clock on Monday morning.”

“Wait,” Vincent said.

Beth listened, not patiently. Something metallic clanged and something heavy, like a thick book, thumped on Vincent’s end.

The sounds made Beth want to scream. She was not a terrifically neat person herself. Still, it drove her over the edge when people on TV knocked the phone off the nightstand and mumbled, “Yuh,” even when it was the detective calling to say the woman buried alive had only one hour of oxygen left. What was that about? Were people who slept heavily supposed to be more virile and serious, unlike Beth, who could be awake and cogent in one second? Were these shows written by the same people who thought it was sexy if women ate meat?

“Vincent, are you there now?”

“Yes, I am. I am. You do know it’s six o’clock here—in the morning.”

“Well, I’m not calling to ask about the weather.”

“Ma, is something wrong? Is Eliza okay? Is the baby okay?”

Beth thought,
Is this possible?
Of course not. Why would this be the first thing to spring to Vincent’s mind? Now what could she say? She could say that she dialed the number by accident when she knocked the phone and the lamp off the nightstand. She could say she was lost in South Dakota.

“It’s about Sicily Coyne,” she said.

“What?”

“Is Emily there?”

“No.”

Beth tried to gather and sort her thoughts, but they were fragmentary. She could not even match up the emotions with the various slices of fact: One thought was about the baby, but not Ben and Eliza’s baby. Another was the fact that Sicily was pregnant but, by tomorrow, she would not be. Sicily did not want Vincent to know. Beth was refusing to honor Sicily’s privacy (guilt). Vincent was a gutless, self-centered egoist whose behavior with Sicily made Beth ashamed, despite the fact that she fully intended to defend him to Marie Caruso at lunch just a few hours from now (ambivalence), and his brevity at this moment was indicative of some strain of Vincent’s personality that Beth had known well, twenty years ago, and wanted to believe had improved with time.

“So,” Vincent said. “If this is about what happened between Sicily and me, I’ve told you, Ma, I feel terrible about it. But it would have never worked. She’s so young—”

“Gee,” Beth said. “How could a girl whose father burned to death in front of her and whose mother died in a car wreck and who lived with a horrible injury for more than ten years be such a ninny? I can see why that was stressful.”

“What’s going on? I can tell you’re mad. Like, irrational.”

“Sicily is pregnant.”

“Wow.”

Wow?
Beth thought. “Despite whatever form of birth control was used, nothing is foolproof, and, yes, Sicily is pregnant.”

“You’re saying she’s … I’m the father?”

“Are you stupid?”

“Well, how long has it been?”

Beth realized she had been married too long. She had become her mother-in-law. “Vincent, do you think there is any reason on earth I would be calling to tell you this, especially at six in the morning, if you were not the father?” Beth said, and immediately repented. She did not want to say “the father,” because that implied there would be a child, and there would not be a child.

The previous night, Marie, crying so hard that she was incoherent, had pulled her car off the road because she couldn’t see to drive. When she finally calmed down enough, she called to tell Beth that the impossible had happened. Was this why Beth had stayed up all night, in a fury, when Sicily and Vincent were on the beach? Of course! The sweet little fling would have statistically impossible consequences, and Beth … had had a premonition. Or was she just crazy? Beth never mistrusted her intuition. Had she ever counted the times it had been wrong versus right? She was almost always right, she was sure of it.

Here was proof! Stick two people from families with the statistically impossible gene together and what did you get?

Then Vincent confirmed exactly what Beth had been thinking.

“This is hard to take in,” Vincent said. “I knew it, though. I just knew it. I knew something was going to happen with this, Ma, but I didn’t know what. She was so into it.”

“Why did you … why were you so … foolish, then?”

“I’ve asked myself that a dozen times.”

Beth’s distress and pity flipped over again, and she was indignant. A dozen times? A full dozen? Since she’d learned about Sicily, Beth had been able to think of little else. Perhaps it would be impossible for Vincent to grasp, as a man—as a human being—how Sicily, given all she had endured, might consider the need for this abortion nothing more than an obstacle, an unfortunate patch of rough ground. Maybe Sicily did think exactly that. Maybe girls didn’t agonize over such things as they had in Beth’s youth.

“Are you there, Ma?”

“Yes. Just thinking. So, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said you were foolish.”

“I was, though. Sicily got the impression that there was way more between us than there was.”

Again going from contrition to disbelief, Beth could barely speak.

“The thing was, I had something she needed.”

“Are you really saying something that’s going to make me want to kill you, like that she needed a good—”

“No. Ma, if you think I’m that big a jerk, why did you call me? I’ve been thinking about it, and why we did what we did, and I think that what she needed was to feel as beautiful as any other girl. And she is beautiful. She has things that aren’t, you know, Hollywood perfect. But you know how people can lose a bunch of weight and look in the mirror and they still see a fat person? She was like that.”

“You’re saying it was mercy.”

“What’s wrong with mercy?”

“Nothing. But how do you think it would make her feel if she knew that?” There was more rattling and rustling, familiar sounds, of Vincent opening and closing his front door, something he did, as did Pat, every morning—for no reason anyone could ever discern—and measuring coffee into the maker.

“She is a proud person and I guess she would feel bad. But there were other reasons. Obvious reasons I don’t want to have a conversation about with my mother. But I have feelings for Sicily.”

“Why didn’t you call her after? Ever?”

“Ma, I didn’t call Sicily
because
I have feelings for Sicily! Uncomfortable feelings. And that would have made it worse. I live here. She lives there.…”

“People move.”

The next pause was so long that Beth believed Vincent had hung up on her. But at last he exhaled, a long breath. “Don’t you wonder why I’m not married?”

Beth thought,
Vincent’s gay. He’s a good dresser and always wears cologne
. “No,” she admitted. “I just figured you weren’t ready.”

“I’ll never be ready. That’s it. My life is … People talk about having baggage? My life is a wagon train. Everybody has a way of being in life, and mine is, I’m better off … Well, the other person is too. So basically, for the same reasons Ben got married almost as soon as he could drive, I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this? Ever?”

“Because you would think it was your fault.” Vincent paused and said then, “You called because you think I should do something. What should I do?”

“You would think that two people like you and Sicily would have more in common.”

“Like alcoholics?”

“Okay. Well. Sicily can’t have children, Vincent. The drugs she has to take … If she ever does, she’ll have to adopt them. Probably. She didn’t have time to go through freezing her eggs—”

“Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I think you should call her.”

“She’s having an abortion? When?”

“As soon as possible. Today or tomorrow,” Beth said, and gave Vincent the number that Marie had given to her.

When she put down the phone, Beth realized that the abortion was probably not only today but at this moment and that for Vincent to call Sicily now would seem forced and artificial. But even a faint gesture was better than nothing. For all her children’s adult lives, Beth had told them that nothing, no matter how grim or humiliating, was made worse by talking about it. She hoped she was right.

——

Marie stood up as Beth staggered into Le Giraffe, shoved by the wind that leapt up the avenue, leaving her breathless. Even Beth, who knew almost nothing about clothes, could recognize the unmistakable lines of vintage Chanel, wool as supple as silk. She guessed maybe … 1958. Maybe 1950. Definitely five grand.

“Hello, Beth. Do you want me to order you some tea?” Marie said.

“I’d like a drink,” Beth said. Marie waved politely to the server, who made a promissory gesture. “I want a vodka and cranberry juice thing …”

“That’s a cosmopolitan,” Marie said to the waiter.

“No, the one with orange juice too.”

“That’s a madras.”

“Huh,” said Beth. “I didn’t know that a little juice changed the name.”

“It raises the price too. Restaurants get you coming and going,” Marie said. Beth ignored the jab. “Here’s to better times. And, Beth, here’s the thing. Sicily thinks she’s in love with Vincent.”

Beth thought of the way Sicily, in California, looked at Vincent, her eyes infatuation in animation, emitting little holograms of goopy pastel butterflies. And when Vincent looked at Sicily, it was with a bemused and bittersweet indulgence, something almost big-brotherly, except when Sicily bounced down to breakfast in running shorts and one of Vincent’s shirts—and nothing else.

“The operation was scheduled for this morning at nine,” said Marie. “I called and asked you to meet me because Sicily decided to postpone it. Now it is scheduled for tomorrow. The doctors want this done immediately, and not only for their own reasons. For Sicily’s well-being. Vincent has to call Sicily and tell her to go ahead. Sicily is a very, very bullheaded young woman.
Testarda.
” Marie tapped her forehead. “But if she were to have some idea about keeping this baby, withdrawing from those drugs would not just take her back where she was before. She could get a massive infection and die.”