What We Leave Behind (40 page)

He was right in reminding me. I was doing this to save our daughter. Jonas, the man I had once loved with every fiber of my being, just happened to be her father.

“You know,” I said, “I didn’t plan to have sex with you that night. I didn’t think it through. I never thought it would actually happen.”

“Neither did I. And I didn’t need it to feel close to you either. I felt close to you long before that night.”

If I spoke right then, everything I’d been trying to hold in would have leaked out.

He said, “It happened because I wanted it to happen, and because I loved you.”

Something about the way he said it made everything complete. The uncertainty that plagued me for years dissipated and flew off into the air.

I said, “I remember when I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t know whether to be ecstatic or miserable. I thought about the life we could have had together. I didn’t think it was possible to love someone the way I loved you. It was this feeling that was just there—no matter how hard I tried to fight it, no matter how much I knew it was wrong. You were this part of me that took up all this space inside.”

He stopped walking and turned to face me. “I’m glad you didn’t give her up,” he said. “I’m glad there’s life in this world because of us. I’m glad there’s a part of you and me that is still together, even if we can’t be.”

His eyes bore into mine, the way I used to love staring into them, pulling me closer. I didn’t know if it was the wine or if I was finally allowing Jonas back in. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted him to touch me. There were words for what I was feeling, even though they weren’t readily accessible to me. I could feel them in the tightening of my chest. “That’s why it means so much to do this for her,” I said. “The thought of losing her, the thought of her dying, it’s unacceptable. If she dies, who will attest to all those feelings we had? How will anybody know how important we once were?”

I hadn’t really expected an answer. Jonas was never really good at giving them, and I was a woman who needed understanding and solutions. When loving me wasn’t enough, he walked away, and everything he’d been meaning to say was hidden inside him.

“She’s not going to die, Jess. We’re going to see this thing through. I promise you, and I know I haven’t made you many promises in the past, none more significant than this one, but I’ll do whatever it takes to save her.” He took my hand into his when he said this, and I didn’t pull away. Instead, I allowed his fingers to clasp around mine, just like I had when we were young and I was in love. “Michelle exists, but she didn’t have to for me to know what you meant to me. What we shared was better than anything I’d ever had. However short a time, however limited, it was something I keep close to my heart. It existed, Jess. Nothing will ever change that.”

I’d been waiting to hear those words for too many years.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted,” he said. “I’m sorrier for myself because I know now what I lost. You were all I wanted and I blew it. I spent so much time worrying about failing Emily, I didn’t see how I’d failed myself and you.”

“You were the first boy I ever loved. I don’t know what went wrong with us. Maybe it was just bad timing,” I said, looking him in the eyes, no longer intimidated. “I don’t know that I’ll ever get over that; parts of you have stayed with me even when I wish them gone.”

I didn’t let go of his hand. I hadn’t wanted to. I wanted to be close to him, close to someone, to feel safe and loved, like I hadn’t in too many months.

“I lost a child before.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. When a parent loses a child, there are no words.

“I was almost nine months pregnant.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I know,” I looked at him, “but I want to. You were there with me that day.” Before the words were even out of my mouth, I realized what I was doing. I stopped the rest from coming out.

“You were always starting a thought and never finishing,” he said.

“I could say the same about you. You started a lot of things you didn’t finish.”

“Finish the thought,” he said.

“I don’t know, Jonas. I’d been living with this thing inside of me, this premonition of doom. When I was leaving a music convention that I really had no business being at, and you know me with the music dial, there it was, that song, playing, just when I’d least expected it, just when I thought there’d be no possible way it could affect me.”

We reached an empty park and stepped inside. He was close to me and edging closer, waiting for me to go on, knowing what I was about to say. “I’d long since forgotten, really, I had. My life was different, better. Years had even passed without me thinking of you. When I heard the song on the radio, everything came back. Even in my
better
life, you were never really gone. I only learned to hide you better. That’s the last thing I remember.”

He was watching me, and it occurred to me that he might kiss me.

I wasn’t sure I’d turn away.

“It was a little boy, a beautiful baby boy. I didn’t see him, but that’s what they told me.”

Having his lips on mine might have eased the burden of my mistake. If only I hadn’t been there in the first place. If only I hadn’t turned the radio dial. If only I hadn’t happened across that song that set my mind in motion. If only I had been anywhere other than on the road and in a heavy machine that was cradling my unborn child and me. If only…a whole host of details that could have been different, and Joshua would be alive today.

“This baby’s not going to bring your son back.”

“I know. My husband already reminded me. Somehow it feels better hearing it from you.”

“Jess…”

I knew what he was about to say. I knew what he wanted from me. I saw it all over his face. I felt it in his grasp. He was twenty-two and beautiful, and he was loving me and filling up every hole in my body. He was considering this was his last chance to give me the life I had once wanted, with him, and it was hard to walk away from that when the memory of what we shared, what we had once meant to each another, made me shiver. If I thought the pull toward him would diminish over time, I was wrong. No time had passed since that night.

He leaned in, and his lips brushed my lips. I felt the familiar softness. I tasted Jonas again. He tried to get closer, opening his mouth wider, but I pulled away, turning my face to the side. It would turn out to be one of the most difficult movements I ever made.

“Don’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said, trying to come up with a better reason. “I can’t…”

“I’m not going anywhere, Jess. I didn’t fight for you before, but I will now.”

“Please don’t,” I said. “I don’t have the strength.”

An airplane sounded above us, the roaring engines causing both of us to look toward the sky. When it passed and quiet returned, Jonas turned to me, but the moment had passed.

He said, “I’ll transfer to a hospital in LA. That way we can be close.” His eyes lowered, trying to find the words that wouldn’t cross more boundaries. “I don’t want to put a strain on you and your family, but I want to be near my child.”

“That’s your decision,” I said, knowing that I was disappointing him by my necessary lack of enthusiasm. That I wanted him close was not the issue.

“I’m sorry,” he said, an apology that covered a lot of terrain.

“No,” I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

It was summertime, and I still had not become pregnant. Ari and I were back in Los Angeles. I would fly out to New York once a month for the awkward appointment where I was poked and prodded and injected. The interest and anticipation flurrying around our undertaking had died down when the first couple of months my body didn’t produce a matched, healthy embryo; and when it finally did, my body continually rejected the embryos. It never occurred to me that my body would reject anything connected to Jonas. The doctors chalked it up to flying or other things.

“Are you stressed?” they asked me. What kind of question was that to ask a woman who was having a baby to save another child?

Michelle was in full remission again, living her life outside the hospital as normally as a now terminally ill twelve-year-old could. She felt so good, she didn’t understand the need for a bone marrow transplant, but we all knew it was only a matter of time before her body would begin to fail her again. We spoke often from her home in Rockland County, and our relationship was growing and taking shape. I didn’t know how I had lived my life without her for all those years, but this new baby was reassurance that I wouldn’t have to anymore.

Marty had all but moved out of our house, unable to accept the duplicity of my actions. The walls that separated us weren’t just stucco and concrete either. The emotional barriers were far more obstructive. He had taken up refuge in an apartment nearby owned by one of the big studio heads. It was lavish and spacious; I was sure he wasn’t alone.

Although absent, Marty remained a devoted, loving father to Ari, having breakfast with him every morning, then going off to work, and returning at the end of the day to bathe him and put him to bed. Ari’s life had not been disrupted at all. Weekends were full of zoo visits, afternoons at the beach, and trips on Marty’s brand new boat. Sometimes I went along. Sometimes I didn’t. I was angry at Marty, and he was angry at me, but there were concessions we had to make to keep it from our son. There were times when we were together when I’d resume the role of his wife, accepting his attention, complimenting him, and showing the slightest hint of interest in his work. The tiniest bit of affection would seep into the darkened crevices we created, and then he would leave, go back to his cave, and I would find solitude in the aloneness of it all. We had allowed things to go too far. There was no turning back.

Jonas would call to check in on me, and we’d talk for hours at a time. I had grown accustomed to his voice on the line before I’d go to bed. He’d whisper, before hanging up, “Sweet dreams,” and his voice would warm up the cold space beside me. I would imagine the kiss that never quite touched my lips.

It was late August when the doctors were getting concerned. Michelle’s health was beginning to show signs of deteriorating again, and I wasn’t pregnant. The registries still had no match for her, and the pressure was rising, contributing a heightened level of stress to our situation. At the doctor’s urging, I made an appointment for a round of tests and a comprehensive evaluation. They told me, “It’s likely your inabilities to carry this baby are due to the accident last year, but the additional stress is a mitigating factor.”

“What are you saying?” I asked. “I can get pregnant with less stress, or I can’t get pregnant at all?”

“We’ll have to wait for your test results, but understand that we oftentimes don’t know why IVF doesn’t work. You’ve done pre-implantation genetic testing, so it’s likely that your embryos are healthy. It could be your uterus, and we won’t know that for a few days.” Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. As sympathetically as she could, she told me to hold tight and have hope, but I had already expected and prepared for the worst.

Marty showed up that evening to bathe and read to Ari. I couldn’t mask the anguish I was feeling, so I kissed my son good night and let Marty put him to bed. Something of this magnitude would have shaken both of us. Only now, I had to bear the burden alone. I hated to consider what news like this would mean for him. Would this be yet another reason for him to move further away from me? I wasn’t one to bask in wasteful self-pity, even if it felt damned good to do so, but Marty wanted loads of children. Somewhere en route to that number, things had gone astray.

I knew Ari was asleep because I heard the door slam and Marty’s tires screech in the driveway outside our window.

When I woke up the next morning, it was late, and I was alone. Marty must have come and gone, leaving the newspaper propped up at the foot of the bed. I should have known this day was going to be different, the way the shades were drawn and the sun seeped through and the air just felt heavier.

I grabbed the paper and began to read; and when I did, the lifestyle section fell to the floor, opening to the page with advice and movie listings. Reaching for the pages, my eyes fell on today’s horoscopes. I’d long ago stopped relying on the psychic medium to give me the direction and answers I was looking for. Not since Marty entered my life and my career took off and things were solid and complete had I felt the need to check my “sign.”
Confidence
, I thought. People who relied upon horoscopes needed more self-confidence. They weren’t in control. Words on the page told them what they needed to hear.

And here I was, twenty-nine years old, a mother and a wife, and my horoscope was calling out to me.

There is a shift in your sign right now. Take a sensitive approach to your goals and the obstacles that may be inhibiting you from achieving them. Sometimes it’s better to let someone or something go. Release yourself from old wounds, and you will find that anything is possible and is very well within your reach
.

That night, Ari was snuggled under the covers and Marty was beside him reading
Goodnight Moon
. I hummed along to myself the words, hoping they might slow down the thoughts that were running through my mind while I picked up some of Ari’s toys from the floor.
Barren
.
Infertile
.
Empty
. These were just a few of the adjectives that prohibited me from concentrating on the brush, the mush, and the old woman who was whispering hush.

I kissed my son on the cheek, inhaling Marty’s scent, the one his lips had just left behind on Ari. It was the closest we had come to any shared intimacy in months. I tasted him on my lips, the memory nudging me awake.

I turned the light out while Marty closed the door behind us.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, sounding more like a concerned husband than the estranged spouse he had become.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing doesn’t usually put you into this kind of state.”