Valley of the Moon (35 page)

F
or four short days I thought I could have it all. With the help of the beta blockers, Joseph could pass freely between my world and his. Now we knew that was a fantasy.

“You could stay,” he said. “Both you and Benno. You could stay.”

He looked so miserable. It was midmorning; everybody was off working. Nobody except the kitchen crew even knew we were back.

Elisabetta and Benno sat about twenty-five feet away from us at a table. Benno shoveled food into his mouth—bacon and a roll smeared with butter. That boy could eat three breakfasts every morning if I let him. Elisabetta kept glancing at us nervously.

“We can't stay, Joseph. Benno has school. He's already been absent five days this semester. He can't miss any more.”

“He can go to school in Greengage.”

“His life is back home.”

“He has a life here, too.”

“Yes, he does. But it's not the same for him as it is for me. I'm thirty-four. I've had plenty of time in my world. I could stay, I could make that choice, God knows I've thought about it. But Benno's only fourteen, not old enough to make a mature decision, and he isn't ready to commit to Greengage. Maybe someday. But not yet.”

Aware of the kitchen crew's eyes on me, I did not reach out and touch him, although it took everything I had not to throw myself into his arms.

“I'll be back before you know it,” I said.

He looked down at the floor despondently and I knew what he was thinking. Who knew how long it would be for me?

“A month. Maybe two. The fog is coming more regularly. The stretches have been shorter and shorter,” I reminded him.

“How can you be so hopeful?”

“Because I understand now,” I said. “The hours, the days, the months are irrelevant. Joseph, don't you see that?”

The fog had brought us together; it would not keep us apart.

B
ut the fog did not materialize the next month or the month after that. I was distraught—it physically hurt to be away from Joseph; my body ached for him. The only thing that kept me sane was knowing he had no idea. Time was passing normally for him. He could look on his calendar and mark the days until he saw me again. I, however, avoided the calendar; it was too painful of a reminder.

So it wasn't until the second fogless month that I realized I'd missed my period.

I'd believed Joseph when he said he was sterile. Apparently he'd had sex without contraception with Martha for twenty years and never impregnated her. How did they test men for sterility back then? Clearly it wasn't foolproof, because it must have been Martha who'd been barren.

There should be a word to describe the particular combination of shock and fate one feels when faced with unimaginable news. I didn't tell anybody for a while. Instead I stood on the shore of this new reality, testing the temperature. Despite my panic and burgeoning list of questions (How would Joseph feel about this? When would the fog return? What about my job? How would my parents react?), the most delicious anticipation began to flutter through me. The utter rightness of this conception.

Joseph would be elated. We would figure it out.

I wanted to do this for him—for
us
. A child. Our child. I had the sense she or he had been there all along, waiting, as I'd been waiting, as Joseph had been waiting all these years.

As soon as we'd returned from Greengage, I'd told Benno about me and Joseph.

“Great,” he'd said.

“That's not a big deal? That's not weird for you?”

“It would be weird if you weren't together. I mean, anybody could have seen that coming.”

Okay, fine, being a couple was one thing, but being pregnant with Joseph's child was another. What would Benno think? Here I was, in the same position I'd been in with him. A single mother, pregnant again.

I tried to soften the blow with waffles at Mel's.

“You're not hungry?” Benno asked after I'd broken the news.

“I don't have much of an appetite these days.” Actually, I was trying to keep from gagging at the smell of the fake maple syrup.

He chewed thoughtfully. “I think you should keep it. Him. Or her,” he added. “But I think it's a her.”

“You do? You—?”

He reached across the table and put his hand over mine. “This is a good thing, Mom.”

“Even if I have no idea when we'll be able to get back to Greengage? Even if I'm all alone?”

“You're not alone. You have me. Besides, I was sick of being an only child: all that attention, all that pressure to succeed. I'm sick of getting straight A's. Let somebody else get straight A's!” He grinned.

Benno did not get straight A's. He did okay in his classes, but what he really excelled in was the arts. Drawing and painting, and of course photography. He was never without his camera. It hung from his neck now.

“Smile,” he said. He snapped my photo. “For Joseph.”

How I loved his optimism.

By the fifth month I couldn't hide my pregnancy any longer, and Rhonda brought me over a box of her old maternity clothes. They were dated, smocks and tent dresses in cheerful madras.

I tried one on.

“Looks great!” Rhonda said.

“Liar. Why can't I be like you? You couldn't even tell you were pregnant from the back. Why can't I have a perfect little basketball of a stomach?”

I studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The smock made me look even more pregnant. I was better off sticking to my oversize shirts.

“Because you're thirty-five,” said Rhonda.

We'd spent many long nights discussing my situation. I'd been back to the Valley of the Moon every full moon for the past five months, but there'd been no fog.

“How are you feeling?” Rhonda asked.

“Okay.”

“Morning sickness?”

“Nope.”

“Ankles swollen?”

“Not yet.”

She folded a shirt. “Lonely?”

I sat down on the bed. “God, I miss him, Rhonda. I don't know what to do. Where to put this ache. It hurts so much. It's like a contraction that never stops.”

“I can't even imagine what you're going through. It's so crazy that he doesn't know, that you don't have any way to get word to him.”

I'd never been more acutely aware of the inequity of the difference in the way time unfurled in each of our worlds. In three of his weeks, I could not only find myself pregnant but quite possibly have his baby.

She sat down next to me and put her hand on the swell of my belly. “But that doesn't mean it's not right. This baby is your fate, Joseph's fate. She's going to be the bridge that links the two of you together.”

I looked down at her familiar hand. The shell-pink nails. The slightly crooked middle finger. Her unadorned gold wedding band.

“You really think so? Really?”

“Really,” she said.

I named her Vivien, Vivi for short.

“Where's the proud father?” asked the maternity nurse.

I'd listed Joseph Bell as the father on the birth certificate.

“He's on his way,” I said.

Vivi! Twenty-two inches; seven pounds, six ounces; from the breaking of my water to the final push—three hours and twenty-two minutes. A full head of black hair, eyes blue. She was perfect in every way except one. Her heart beat a little too fast.

The doctor listened intently with his stethoscope, then abruptly pulled the instrument out of his ears and smiled.

“I'm sure it's nothing to be worried about, but just in case, let's get an EKG and a chest X-ray, and set Mommy's mind at ease.”

Mommy's mind would not be at ease. Mommy suspected why her daughter's heart beat a little too fast, and if she was right, there was no medicine in this world that could fix it.

They wheeled her away. Benno, Rhonda, and I sat in my room in silence. An hour later the doctor brought Vivi back himself.

“There's nothing to be worried about. She's got something called supraventricular tachycardia, a fancy name for arrhythmia. Nine times out of ten they outgrow it.” He handed a swaddled Vivi to me. “This gal is just in a hurry. She'll be an active one.”

“Can I bring her home?” I asked.

“Of course. But let's keep an eye on her.” He scribbled a name on a prescription pad and gave it to me. “Tim Walker—an excellent pediatric cardiologist. Set up an appointment with him in a month's time.”

Another prickle of worry ran down my spine, but I quickly banished it.

“Can I hold her?” asked Benno.

He took her in his arms. I'd never seen such an unguarded look on his face. A fierce, protective tenderness. Joy.

I'd finagled three months of maternity leave. Pease had not been happy when I'd told him I was pregnant; I'd never forget the look of contempt on his face.

“Who's the father?” he asked.

“That's none of your business,” I said.

I knew what he assumed—that I'd stupidly and carelessly got knocked up again—but I didn't care. I owed him nothing.

I didn't want Joseph to miss out on anything, so I began keeping a journal, a record of Vivi's daily activities.

She woke at 5. Nibbling toes. Laughing. One curl plastered to her cheek. Cranky morning. Gas? A trip to Dolores Park. Put her on a blanket under the trees. She stared up at the leaves and cooed for nearly twenty minutes. Suspect she's thinking deep thoughts. Suspect she's highly intelligent. Fell asleep on the breast. Stayed asleep through the evening news. Woke at 9—gave her a taste of smushed-up banana. Surprise, disgust, and yum flickered across her face.

The days were a year long. The days passed in a second. I'd forgotten how time slid when you had an infant. I caved to its rhythms. The only thing fastening us to reality was breakfast with Benno and his return after school.

Vivi was a movie that was always running; a life preserver, bonding Benno and me together in a profound way. She was a fragile thing to be protected at all costs. And she was, of course, a source of great delight. An actress, a natural comedian. She had us in constant fits of laughter. Gurgling and burbling. Inviting us to poke a finger into her Pillsbury Doughboy belly. She'd do anything for attention.

She had a Mohawk of ebony hair. Her eyes hadn't yet settled on a shade. At breakfast they were light blue like Joseph's. At lunch, a green-blue, similar to mine, and at dinner, navy. Her resting face was a half smile, as if she were about to be tickled. She was merriment incarnate.

She wasn't an observer like Benno. She was a doer. An investigator. The first day she learned to crawl, she got her hand stuck under the fridge. She had to be watched constantly, and watch her we did. She was a one-baby show.

Every day after school Benno would run home and sweep her up in his arms. She called him Ba. She had a special laugh just for him. A high-pitched
hee-haw-hee
that brought tears to his eyes.

Only two things disrupted the routine every month. A fruitless trip to the Valley of the Moon and a visit to Tim Walker, the pediatric cardiologist. I dreaded both.

“Is she sleeping more?” asked Dr. Walker.

“No,” said Benno. Benno accompanied me to every appointment.

Dr. Walker smiled at me. At times Benno acted more like Vivi's father than her brother. He'd taken his role as man of the house seriously.

“How long does it take her to fall asleep?”

“Depends,” I said. “If she's tired, boom, she's out. But if she's awake, which is most of the time, you can't keep up with her.”

“She has fifty words already,” said Benno.

“Well, there's no doubt she's a smart girl,” said Dr. Walker. “But tell me what you mean by ‘boom, she's out.' ”

Benno and I exchanged glances.

“I'm exaggerating,” I said. “She's like any kid. If she's tired, within five minutes her eyes are blinking shut.”

“No, Mom,” said Benno. “It is
boom
. One second she's awake, the next second she's asleep.”

My stomach roiled; I had been intentionally understating things. “Is that a bad thing?” I asked.

“It is if she's fainting,” said Dr. Walker.

“But she's not fainting, she's sleeping.”

“It might look like sleeping. But it could be that her heart has sped up so much she just sort of passes out. A baby can't tell us what's happening. When she's older, she'll be able to report to you and let you know if she feels dizzy or light-headed.”

When Vivi had an episode, her heart rate could elevate to a staggering 250 to 300 beats a minute.

Dr. Walker looked at the chart. “Let's see, she's eleven months and two days. Her resting heart rate when she was born was 160 beats a minute. Each month, it's gone up a beat or two, and today we're at…180.” He looked at me over his glasses. “Normal for a child her age, almost a year old, is 80 to 130. The number should not be increasing, Lux. It should be decreasing as the heart muscles get stronger, as she gets older and stronger.”

He squatted down next to Vivi, who was buckled in the stroller, chewing on her stuffed monkey's tail.

“Hey, cutie pie,” he said. “How about you cut down on your coffee intake and give up smoking? Can you do that for me?”

She promptly yanked his glasses off his face and flung them across the room. We all heard the plastic frames crack.

“Vivi!” I yelped.

Dr. Walker laughed, walked to his desk, and pulled out another pair of identical glasses. “And that's why I buy them in bulk.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said.

He nodded, looked at Benno and me. “Frankly, I'm concerned.”