The Me You See (6 page)

“She didn’t. She left.”

Stefia wound her right foot around the leg of her chair,
slipping her moccasin off and on, off and on.

“Where do you get your support?” I asked. “I mean, if your
mom is gone and your dad is…”

“…completely detached?”

“Yeah. Where was your support? Who raised you up?”

Stefia set her mug down and pushed her thumb back and forth
across the side of it like she was trying to rub off a stain.

“The theater,” she said.

She kept rubbing at that spot on her mug. I was pretty sure
it was a flaw in the ceramic but she was determined to rub it out.

“So…you’ve been raised and had all your support from…a
stage?”

“Not just the stage,” she said, giving up on the spot and
picking up the mug to take a short but thoughtful sip. “The theater isn’t just
a stage. It’s people and…an energy. I’ve been raised by those who have watched
me. And by people I’ve watched. I see a lot from up on stage. The audience
speaks volumes without saying a word.”

Then she smiled at me.

“Don’t let your son get you down,” she continued. “Kids
screw up. It’s what we do.”

I let out a sarcastic snort and picked up my mug.

“I don’t believe that you, Stefia, even possess the
capability to screw up.”

She looked at me with a slightly crooked smile that I
didn’t think could possibly show up on her pretty face.

“Oh, Heidi,” she said, taking a slow sip of what was left
in her mug. “You would be surprised.”

**

A week later, after talking a teen mom-to-be through an
epidural, Amanda caught me in the hallway by the arm.

“Oh my god, did you hear?”

She pulled me into an alcove, twisting my arm as she yanked
me further into the corner. I opened my mouth to yell at her but when our eyes
met, I realized her face had lost all color except for a mascara streak on her cheek.

“There was a shooting…at the theater…just twenty minutes
ago.  Oh my god…”

It spilled out of her mouth in between gasps that got more
shallow every time she tried to speak.

“Amanda, slow down. Take a breath.”

“There was a goddamn shooting!” she yelled. “At the
theater!”

“What theater?” I yelled back, assuming she meant one of
the three movie theaters near the hospital.

“The Crystal Plains Theater.”

Amanda leaned against the wall and then slumped down until
she sat on the floor. Immediately the questions spun through my head: how many
people were dead? Was the shooting inside? Outside? Did the shooter aim at the
audience? The actors on stage?

Oh. God.

Maryanne stuck her head around the corner of the alcove.
She looked at Amanda, who stared blankly at the carpet with tears dripping off
her chin.

“Pull yourself together,” Maryann hissed at Amanda. “If
you’re going to freak out, do it in the nurse’s lounge.”

Then Maryanne looked to me.

“Room 317 is ready to deliver. I need you.”

I nodded on complete autopilot, following Maryanne and
passing through the door of 317 to assist with the chaos of birth. I encouraged
and instructed and as I did my job, realized there was something uncomfortably
disjointed about helping to deliver a baby and, at the same time, waiting on the
names of the dead.

Life is kind of strange that way.

Eight hours later as the sun was just coming up, I walked
out of the hospital. I stood on the sidewalk, using my phone to stream live
video of the press conference about the shooting. My hands shook as I waited.
The police chief wasn’t talking fast enough. They weren’t…

When they read Stefia’s name, my cell phone dropped from my
hand and hit the sidewalk, the screen shattering.

It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

I collapsed to my knees, the cold of the sidewalk biting
through my scrubs. A guy in a puffy orange jacket who was walking past stopped
and bent down to help me up.

“Hey lady, lady…are you okay?” he said. “Did you fall? Do
you need help?”

I shook my head, staring at the concrete I was kneeling on.

“Lady, are you okay?”

I was not okay.

I was not okay.

**

Amanda grabs Ice Cup Number Twenty-Six for room 310.

“This woman is going to be in labor forever,” she says,
rolling her eyes. “Why doesn’t she just let the doctor break her water?”

 I don’t answer. I don’t look at her. I just stare at the
computer screen and pretend I’m entering chart information.

“Listen,” she continues, quieter. “I know you’re having a
rough day. I know this day sucks for you.”

Amanda touches my shoulder.

“I’m sorry you had to work.”

I look up at her to see a hesitant smile, like she almost
thinks I’m going to smack her for touching me.

“You should probably go deliver that ice before it melts,”
I say.

She turns to head to room 310 and I’m positive that any
personality flaw that irks me about her has  little, if anything, to do with
how she was raised. Annoying is just what Amanda is—maybe for some completely
random reason that will never be known.

I think about all those people that died. Did any of their
parents look into their future and see it coming?

Of course not.

I wanted to bust in on all the laboring women and tell them
to stop the bickering back and forth about vaccinations and babywearing and
breastfeeding and whether a kid should sleep on their stomach or back or side
or hanging from their feet because it doesn’t really matter in the end, does
it? We deliver all these babies into sterile, crisp white rooms only to release
them into a world of piled up shit.

It really doesn’t matter what we do.

You don’t plan in the end that your kids’ dreams are going
to get cut short. You don’t plan your kid is going to end up lying dead on the
stage of a theater in a small town.

All those parents of the young people who died… did they
know that when they were discussing the differences on the pros and cons of
circumcision or whether or not the mom should work outside the home that their
kid was going to end up shot on some random Thursday?

Of course not.

I keep thinking about that. I keep thinking on all the new
parents and middle aged parents and older parents who walk around saying
not
my kid
. That will never happen to
my
kid. As in just by saying that,
you have some kind of guarantee that your kid will turn out perfect.

Saying it is true does not make it true. Why don’t they get
it?

There are jails full of people’s kids to prove it. My kid
is one of them. You can’t tell me that every cell is taken up by someone whose
parents were complete screw ups. Because I’m not a screw up.

Birth is a predictable process. Sperm meets egg. Egg
divides a bazillion times. Fetus matures. If there are no complications, birth
happens and the proud parents take home their latest tax deduction.

Parenting, however, is not predictable. Parenting is not a
mathematical equation. You can do A plus B and think you’re going to get C, but
you might actually end up with the equivalent of Z in a completely different
language. You can give your kids everything the latest child psychologist guru
says they should have and serve it up to them in a sparkling bucket of happy,
and your kid might take the bucket, tip it over, set it on fire, and walk the
other way.

And no one knows why.

Anyone’s kid could have been at that theater in that mess
that happened. Anyone’s kid could have been in the audience, hiding and
screaming or trying to run. Anyone’s kid could have been on stage getting shot
at.

You don’t think so? How in the world can any honest parent
answer no?

So. Does it really matter how you are raised?

I just don’t know anymore.

Lullaby, and good night…

I love that sound. I love when that lullaby plays over the
loudspeaker. Because with another new life, there is the hope of a bright spot
on the pockmarked face of humanity.

There is hope, but no guarantee.

Their house was the same shade of blue as my first wife’s
eyes; almost one of those colors you shouldn’t paint the exterior of a house.
That piercing shade of blue was the entire reason I initially looked across the
street and stared at Stefia.

I moved into the Dutch Colonial across from Stefia four
years ago. It had been vacant for a year before I took it over, so there was
work to be done. I got it for a steal and immediately went to work, first
repairing, and then molding it into the spot of refuge I’d bought it to be.

I had assumed that shortly after my work began, the
neighborhood welcome wagon would show up. I imagined there would be plates of
cookies and offers to help with whatever was needed. That’s how we would have
done it where I grew up. But that wasn’t how they did it in Minnesota. Oh,
sure, I knew neighbors were peeking from behind curtains, wondering who the
late 40ish guy was who had taken up residence in that Dutch Colonial with the
peeling white paint. And admittedly, there were a few that were brave enough to
walk by and wave. But as far as being neighborly, as far as offering help…well,
that whole Minnesota Nice thing seemed to be a thing made of fairy tales, or at
the very least, greatly exaggerated.

I didn’t really know much about small towns in Minnesota.
And they didn’t know much about me. And maybe that was the whole problem.

Two weeks after I had moved in, I thought I might make a
good impression by being my own reverse welcome wagon. I baked a plate of
cookies and planned to walk right over to that house that was the same shade of
blue as my first wife’s eyes.

Why that house? Why not any of the others on the street?

It had as much to do with the shade of the paint that stuck
to its walls as it did with the beautiful girl who often sat under the tree in
its front yard.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking:
Niles,
stop it. I don’t want to hear it. You have to know it was wrong.

I know you’re thinking I’m a bad person, but I couldn’t
stop. And you wouldn’t think it was wrong if you understood what was happening.

I arranged two dozen Russian teacakes on a beautiful burnt
orange platter and carried it across the street. Stefia was sitting at the base
of the tree, like she’d done most days since I’d moved in. She was pawing
slowly through the leaves on the ground like she was searching for something
lost.

She was so beautiful. Long and thin like a stick of taffy
you’d held in one hand and stretched out with your teeth. Her skin was creamy
and white like a vanilla pudding pop.

Oh. God.

“Hello,” I said.

I figured she would have heard my footsteps crunching into
the leaves, but she was so engrossed in her search that she jumped when I
spoke. 

“I’m sorry to frighten you,” I said, putting my hand out to
calm her frantic stare. “I was on my way over here to introduce myself and
deliver these cookies. I noticed you seem to be looking for something. Do you
need help?”

When I really looked, I saw tears in her eyes. She wiped
them away, embarrassed to have a stranger see her crying.

“No, that’s okay,” she said, remaining seated in the
leaves. “I’m okay. I found what I was looking for.”

I looked in her lap and saw she was holding a crudely made
wooden box with bits and pieces of stuff inside. She fingered at a piece of
pink lined paper in her hand, a note obviously scribbled on it. She folded up
the paper and shoved it back inside the box.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine.  Are you the new neighbor from across the
street?”

“Yes,” I said. “I just moved in a couple weeks ago. With
moving in and all the repairs, I haven’t had a chance to make a proper
introduction. I’m Niles Connelly.”

I handed her the cookies, which she took with a smile and
set down next to the box of treasures.

I extended my hand for her to shake.

“And you are?” I prompted.

 She took my hand to shake it and I pulled her up into a
standing position.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m Stefia.”

“Stefia. Now that’s a lovely name.”

“That’s what everyone says.” She smiled, cautiously.

“I rather like it.”

“I hate it,” she confessed. “I’d much rather have a normal
name. Like Mary. Or Sue.”