What You Wish For (36 page)

Andy Signs, Again

S
ummer had wanted to come.

“Have you lost your mind?” Andy flat out refused.

“I want to pay my respects . . .”

It was like tossing a cigarette at a dead Christmas tree. His anger blazed. “Bullshit. You need to stamp yourself all over me, like kudzu. Do you want to pee on my leg so the scent will remind Maryn’s cancer-riddled body not to make a play for me in her last days of life?”

Summer’s lip trembled and she looked so scared, Andy’s hot anger faded as fast as it flared. It wasn’t Summer he was mad at. He pulled her close. As soon as he touched her, she started sobbing.

“I’m sorry.” He kissed the top of her head.

Summer sniffled into his chest as Andy stroked her hair.

“Do you still love her?” The words were slipped into his breast pocket. He was shocked.

“What?” He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to upset Summer. There was no yes or no answer.

“Do you regret leaving her?” Her face flowered up, blue eyes wet.

“Yes.” He stroked her cheek. Summer shriveled in shock. “She had
cancer
. I was a spoiled schoolboy and left her when she needed me the most. Of course I regret it. But it happened, and time passed. I thought I couldn’t handle my wife’s illness, but I had no idea about the guilt. What I left was nothing compared to what I took with me. I don’t know what cancer feels like, but guilt feels like being slowly eaten from the inside. Then I met you.” He tucked a straw strand behind her ear. “I met you and I kept thinking, God must be looking the other way, because I didn’t deserve anything this good. I actually convinced myself I could put one over on God while he was distracted.” His laugh held no humor. “All this Prop 11 shit was his smack-down reminder of who’s in charge and the penalty for arrogance. The Kraken lives. But even the worst sucker gets a shot at redemption. God gave me a second chance to do right by Maryn and I won’t fuck it up.”

Summer was crying again, but this time it was different. He held her close, as if he could absorb some release.

“Summer, I’ve been a rotten failure of a husband once, and I’m not going to do it again. But I owe my first wife. She’s given me every chance to hurt her and I took them all. Just once, I want to do the right thing.”

“Do you know what it’s like to be the second wife of a man whose first wife was perfect?” Summer whimpered.

In a way, Andy did. The Andy he’d been before he left Maryn was perfect compared to the Andy he was after. Every day he fell short. He couldn’t get back through time—the web of decisions was too knotty—but he could try to get better.

“I have to do one last thing.” His words were a delicate reminder that Maryn could not trouble Summer much longer. “When I get back, what do you say we blow off Chance for Life tonight and have spaghetti at Jay’s?” It was a hole in the wall they both loved. “My job as ex-candidate Knox is to keep current candidate Knox from getting too wrapped up in all the noise.” Summer nodded, and Andy kissed her Alabama nose before heading out the door.

“Is that all of them?” Andy had signed everything Maryn put in front of him. He grew almost gleeful with each successive page. He would have signed a last will and testament giving her everything. He would have signed an arrest warrant for Cambodian orphans. He would have signed Gandhi’s death sentence. He would have signed a hundred-year contract for AT&T to be his service provider.

Maryn nodded. She looked so peaceful, Andy couldn’t believe she was sick. Her demeanor had noticeably eased when he grasped the pen. She lightened with every scrawl. It made him never want to stop signing pages.

“Want any more, an autograph for posterity?” As he said it, his smile died. The reason she had hair and looked normal was because she’d refused treatment. When she’d looked like a wraith, she’d been on the road to health. She was dying now. He felt like an ass.

“No.”

He slid the papers into a protective folder. When she took them, her hand shook. It wasn’t a side effect of her illness. He hoped the ease with which he’d signed made her comfortable. He wished he felt more possessive of their child, but he didn’t. The swell under the covers was alien to him.

“All yours then.”

“She may want to know who you are.”

“Absolutely anytime.” Maryn seemed a little suspicious, and he thought about comparing himself to Big Brothers/Big Sisters, then he thought that might seem weird since they were talking about his own child, so he didn’t.

“I appreciate that.”

She was tiring, but Andy wasn’t ready to leave. He settled precariously on the bed, avoiding lumps under the covers that could be parts of Maryn.

“How are you doing?” The question was stupid, but he thought it was the kind of stupid that was allowed.

“Fine.” She went along. “You?”

“It’s been hell.”

She smiled at that. “All these starlets craving cameras. They can have them. I heard there’s a bounty for a photo of my bald head. They’re forgetting that I’m not getting chemo, so my hair isn’t going anywhere.”

“I hit one with my car last week. Or I should say, it hit me.” It felt good to acknowledge a common enemy. “So, what will happen now?”

“I’ll carry the baby as long as possible. The doctors are giving me steroids to develop her lungs. When she’s born Wyatt will take care of her and I’ll do my best to get home.”

“If you want my involvement, I’m there.” He repeated his offer.

“The papers . . .” Maryn gestured toward the documents, anxious.

“Maryn, I’ll never invite myself in without your express request. The choice is yours or her adoptive father’s. I’m only saying I’m here if you need me, or if she needs me.”

“First-time frozen-embryo single parent on her deathbed,” Maryn joked. “I think we’ll all have to wing it.”

Andy had a terrible thought that the baby might not make it, that Maryn would die first. He needed this child to live, proof of his goodness. “How far along are you?”

“Twenty-six weeks.” A light crossed Maryn’s face. “We’ve passed the cutoff point—she’s old enough now that doctors will use medical intervention to save her life. At twenty-eight weeks there’s a ninety percent survival rate, and good odds she won’t have long-term health problems or disabilities. That’s in two weeks.” The way she said it made Andy wonder if that was as far as she thought she’d go.

“And this fellow of yours, he’s ready for a baby?”

Maryn’s face shut down a little bit. He ignored the inner voice that wondered why she saw him as such an enemy.

“I’m glad you found someone.” Andy meant it. He didn’t feel jealousy, just relief. “I’m happy for you, Mar.” As soon as he realized what he’d said, he was back to feeling dreadful.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Maryn read the play on his face. “I’m pregnant and about to get married, but I’m dying of cancer.”

He couldn’t speak.

“Andy, you have an irrepressible goodness. It gets deeply banked, and sometimes you get turned around, but it doesn’t go out.” She was absolving him. Maybe so he wouldn’t change his mind about the documents or maybe she believed it. Andy didn’t care. He clung to the words.

“I want you to have this.” It was time. The velvet box was familiar to her, satin worn around the corners. He set it on a lump he thought was her knee.

Maryn didn’t reach for it, so it sat awkwardly between them.

“I never hated a man enough to give him diamonds back.” She did her best Zsa Zsa Gabor. They both knew it wasn’t true.

“It’s for our daughter.” He couldn’t help saying “our” even though it made Maryn uncomfortable. Andy’s torso strained toward Maryn, willing her to pick it up, the way his whole body played video games. “You can decide what you want to tell her, but it was her grandmother’s, then it was yours. Now it’s hers.”

Maryn still hesitated.

“Material things aren’t important, but they can be if it helps,” he urged her. “Everyone should have something small that has room inside to hold their history.” Sometimes, Andy got it right.

Maryn touched the box that had nestled in her silky camisoles for years, and opened it. Her former engagement ring winked at her.

“Only a diamond could still be beautiful under fluorescent hospital lights,” Maryn said.

“Not true,” Andy said, looking at her. Andy wondered if there was something wrong with him that he wasn’t more moved by her rounded belly, his daughter. But it was her face that captivated him. His mother had been right—she was born for this. Maryn had snatched this child from cancer twice, and would deliver her safely out of its reach, the last act of a mother.

“Thank you,” Maryn said.

“I’ll go.” Andy couldn’t deny it any longer. Maryn was tiring, and her gentleman friend was pacing outside. He dawdled to the door, loath to sever this connection.

“Thank you for coming, and for agreeing.” He’d noticed she tried never to mention the baby, probably to keep him from getting wobbly and changing his mind.

“Thank you for giving me a chance to not be an abominable bastard to you,” Andy was surprised to say.

She gave a raspy chuckle. “Stop beating yourself up. For a smashed mechanism, this relationship made some good things.” Maryn was so kind.

“I could come again . . . if you needed me.”
Let’s pretend
.

“I have everything I need.”
There wouldn’t be more time.

At the door, he turned, tears in his eyes. “At the risk of sounding completely self-absorbed, it was hard enough to walk out of your hospital room for the last time once. Doing it twice is unbearable.”

Maryn blinked hard and opened her arms. He crossed the room in three steps and buried himself in her embrace.

Face in her neck, he said, “My deathbed promise to you is that I won’t look after our daughter. I’m here if she wants me, but it’s your decision.”

Eyes and nose shiny, Maryn whispered, “Thank you.”

As slowly as he could and still be moving, Andy pulled away, touched her cheek, backed to the door, and slipped out, never breaking eye contact. He would not see her again.

In the hallway, Andy saw her man. Wyatt was his name. He looked like Mr. Chips with Superman’s jaw. He looked like someone who could be trusted more than Andy. They shook.

“I think I’m a better man, if you need me,” Andy said. “I warn you, though, I’m uselessly manipulated by the women in my life.”

The man pumped his hand firmly. “It’s good to know I won’t be the only man emasculated by an infant girl.”

Andy moved from the cocooned hospital interior down the stairs and along the hall toward the bright sunlight of the building doors. As he stepped outside, he had one breathless moment at the wonder that he had created a daughter, but it passed. He was Just Andy. He was happy to be Summer’s pool boy with a quiet, nonambitious counsel’s job. They might have kids eventually, and he could tie ribbons in little Delilah’s curls. Until then, he had dinner at Jay’s tonight. There was softball Thursday. Maybe he’d start a local group to create more green spaces. You never knew, his daughter might like to play there.

Eva Signs Off

M
aryn and Wyatt were married by the hospital chaplain without ceremony at Maryn’s bedside. Her wedding dress was a white sheet, her flowers prohibited from the cancer ward. Eva served as their witness. She’d dismissed within seconds her instinct to make the occasion festive, perhaps with rubber glove balloons or aspirin tossed in lieu of rice. Artificial gaiety would have been grotesque. The couple recited the simple vows, shared a glass of champagne, and it was done. For a honeymoon, they met with their lawyer, executing a durable power of attorney and naming Wyatt guardian of the unborn child. The marriage was the most synchronized alignment of wishes Eva had witnessed between newlyweds.

Eva felt cheated to meet Maryn like this. She would have liked this woman, would have liked more time to spend with her. She said as much to Wyatt on the drive home.

“She’s lovely.”

“She’s remarkable.”

“Lately I’ve had appetizers of women like Maryn or Dimple Bledsoe that are the quality ingredients I’d like in my life. Instead, I’m surrounded by deep-fried chocolate-covered pork chops like Daisy Carmichael. I wish I’d known Maryn more.” Eva was wistful.

“Me too.”

“Are you in love with her?” Eva didn’t know if that would be better or worse.

“No. Is that funny?” He stole a glance at Eva from the road.

“I don’t know.”

“I care deeply about Maryn, but only as a friend. I can’t tell you why, but I’m not attracted to her intimately.”

“Perhaps because of a certain biology teacher?” Eva teased.

“Mmm.” Wyatt was noncommittal, but his color rose. Eva dropped it. It felt profane to talk about the living and loving that might happen after Maryn was dead, and even more wicked to be thinking it while she was alive.

“It makes me feel odd,” she said.

“How do you mean?”

The contrast between Eva and Maryn was stark. “I’m robust, with health and fertility, and have no desire to use the equipment. Maryn is dying because she had the desire but not the tools. God should have done a better matching job.”

“You’re aren’t feeling guilty again, are you? Please don’t do that.”

“Not guilty.” Eva fidgeted. “Like I’m not a natural woman.” She was glad Wyatt had to keep his eyes on the road.

“That seems to be going around. Maryn didn’t feel like a natural woman because she’s sterile, because she had to buy her pregnancy from a lab.”

“But she has a mothering instinct.”

Wyatt turned into BigLots so smoothly Eva didn’t notice he was doing it until he parked the car and faced her.

“Just because you don’t want to birth a baby doesn’t mean the adults around you don’t run the constant risk of low-cholesterol meals, warm scarves, and thoughtful tokens. You lecture about losing weight and wearing seat belts and always have a Band-Aid handy. You make me key lime pie on my birthday, and chicken soup when I’m sick. If I was sick on my birthday, I’d get key lime–flavored soup.”

Eva blinked back tears.

“People are conditioned to think ‘within the box,’ commencing, to my chagrin, in the halls of my high school. Our culture tells us a male and a female must mate for life, breed one replica of each, and domesticate a dog. Scientifically, this is illogical. While we’re biologically driven to perpetuate our species, if all females bred, the human race would render itself extinct through resource exhaustion. If you give God the credit, then he has employed two methods of population control—one is physical infertility, the other, mental disinclination. You are not deviant, Eva, you are an essential part of God’s plan.”

Eva was crying now because Wyatt was so kind. He looked straight ahead, giving her a form of privacy.

After a pause, he said, “You can always change your mind, of course, and have children. But that would mean God would have to go to plan B and release the locusts.”

Eva gave a watery laugh. “What about Maryn?”

It was his turn to chuckle. “Even God can’t win an argument with Maryn. He told her she couldn’t have kids. She disagreed. Maryn wins. God realizes he made a mistake and calls it a day.”

“Sounds like Chuck Norris.” Eva accepted his handkerchief. She was never comfortable using them because she hated giving back a cloth full of boogers, but clean, white handkerchiefs were so very Wyatt and he insisted. “Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table because he only recognizes the element of surprise.”

Eva thanked her cousin without embarrassing him by squeezing his hand as she returned the handkerchief.

“A chemist walks into a pharmacy and asks the pharmacist, ‘Do you have acetylsalicylic acid?’ ” Wyatt said. “ ‘You mean aspirin?’ says the pharmacist. ‘That’s it,’ says the chemist. ‘I can never remember that word.’ ”

Eva stared out the windshield at shopping carts strewn across the parking lot like a giant toddler’s abandoned matchbox cars.

“You know what makes me feel better sometimes?” she said. “Anonymizing big-box shopping warehouses. I can buy stuff I don’t need to create a reward system against the disturbances of life.”

“Well, would you look at that,” said Wyatt, turning off the car and getting out.

Eva returned to her office, spirits lifted after fulfilling her primal gender role as gatherer. By asserting her self-worth through the purchase of bath salts, and validating her entitlement to be pampered, she felt better about her place in the universe.

“I thought you swore off shopping,” her assistant said.

“Money is congealed energy. Releasing it frees life’s possibilities.”

“I’m glad you’re in a Zen state, because Daisy’s on her way in.”

Eva knew. “Can you prepare two copies of form T42? I’m going to include it with her
Cora
contract.”

Her assistant did a double take. “You mean a C42.”

“If it looks like chicken, tastes like chicken, and feels like chicken but Chuck Norris says it’s beef, then it’s beef,” Eva said. “I want the T42.”

Eva pulled up the CuteOverload website on her computer. It was good to have photos of kittens in baskets near at hand when meeting Daisy, like laying out the morning’s aspirin on the bedside table before a night out.

The actress and her little dog burst in, a chaos of static and perfume.

“Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me!”

“I have good news about
Cora
.” Eva didn’t feel the magic she normally did telling an actress she’d won the breakout part. She felt leaden.

“I did it!” Daisy gave a joyous shriek and twirled Charlie around. No thank you or acknowledgment of Eva’s input. “Mine, mine, mine! I’m Cora Aldridge! I’m the
it
girl! I’m the famousest!”

Eva found Daisy’s glee irritating. She’d just as soon smack the smugness out of her current client as hug her. She wished Julian Wales luck.

“Oh, Charlie! It’s all coming together!” Daisy beamed at her dog. “I’m going to have my own flavor at Millions of Milkshakes and my own star on Hollywood Boulevard and my own line of shoes.” She was lost for a moment in happy contemplation. Eva felt a pang of guilt over her negative thoughts when Daisy kissed Charlie on the nose. Until she continued. “Guess I don’t need you anymore, runt.” She looked thoughtful. “Do you suppose there’s a charity auction for celebrity-owned animal friends? I could donate him.”

Eva was horrified. “You can’t give away Charlie!”

“Why not?” Daisy asked. “I’ll be busy with rehearsals. Then there’ll be the promotional tour.” Her future dazzled her inner eye.

“But he’s your
dog
,” Eva sputtered.

A tiny wrinkle appeared between Daisy’s brows. It gave Eva a satisfying glimpse of a future young actress knocking Daisy off her perch.

“I don’t need props anymore. I
am
the hot new actress.” She considered Eva. “You could have him.”

The implication was clear.

“I have an envelope here with your contract,” Eva said. “Our lawyers have reviewed it. Take a look and let me know if you want to add anything.”

“Like gumdrops in my trailer?”

“Like that. We’ll finish negotiating the minor items, but I don’t expect opposition to reasonable requests. You’ll need to sign the final.” Along with the T42 form, terminating Eva’s representation.

When Daisy bustled out the door—“Got to run . . . I should be at Château Marmont when the news breaks for maximum exposure. . . .” Eva knew it would be the last time she saw her in this office. She couldn’t represent a client she found repugnant.

“Everyone can be replaced,” Eva muttered. “Chuck Norris was originally cast in
24
, but was replaced by the producers when he saved the day in eleven minutes.”

To be fair, Eva didn’t know whether it was Daisy she found distasteful, or the person Eva had become while representing her. In high school, Eva had worked at a Beaches ’N Cream ice cream stand. She was alone most of the day selling cones to surfers and handling fives, tens, and twenties unsupervised. Even the honest Eva had pocketed a twenty for gas one day. It was so easy. She’d quit when she’d been tempted a second time.

With
Cora
, Eva had teetered precariously close to shady dealings. She hadn’t done anything illegal, but Eva hadn’t been the person she wanted to wake up with. If you didn’t feel joy in getting your client the part, what was the point? Maybe Eva
was
teetering on the downslope of a relevancy razor, vulnerable to hungry young agents. But she refused to believe she couldn’t do her job with standards. If she couldn’t, well, there were other satisfying jobs that wouldn’t require her to be a double-dealing bitch. Or leave her man watching steak cool while she stalked a director into the men’s room.

The assistants were whispering that Eva had insanely cut loose a future blockbuster. Eva doubted it. Daisy was her own worst obstacle, and Eva expected word of Julian’s struggle would filter back to her in a few short weeks. Eva would get the laurels of being a queenmaker without being the queen’s whipping post. The check was in the bank. The clients would come. As if on cue, her phone rang. She let it roll to her assistant. She had another call to make.

She looked at the kittens piled adorably in the basket, took a deep breath, then dialed Dimple Bledsoe.

“Dimple, it’s Eva Lytton calling, from the Stop the Prop gala? I got your number from Freya Fosse.”

Dimple sounded surprised. “That’s a first. Freya crushes direct contact with her clients like Thor’s hammer. How’d you breach the Norwegian force field?”

“I’m an agent, actually.”

There was a pause. “Of course, I’m quite content with Freya.” Dimple sounded uncomfortable.

Eva laughed. “Anyone would be a fool to leave Freya Fosse, and more of a fool to try to steal her clients. I’m not so masochistic.” She cleared her throat. “Or maybe I am. I represent Daisy Carmichael.”

Silence. “Daisy is a . . . she . . . she has . . . I liked
Best Day
.”

Eva would have laughed if she weren’t tied up in knots.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it. I was the one who told Julian Wales you were pregnant, and I’m calling to apologize.”

The silence this time was longer. Eva realized she was holding her breath.

“Why would you do that?” Dimple sounded hurt.

That was the million-dollar question. Eva sighed. “Not because I think it’s acceptable. I was under enormous pressure on
Cora
when I saw you at Hope Clinic. It burst out of me when I was talking to Julian. I immediately wished I could undo it, but we all know about Pandora’s box.”

“Were you spying on me?”

“Oh, god no!” Eva scrambled. “I saw you at the clinic, and then you weren’t drinking, and . . .”

“And it was convenient for you.”

“I can only plead temporary insanity.” Truly, Daisy would make anyone crazy. “This competitive monster ate the real Eva. I’ve killed it, but I’m sorry to say the damage was done. I’m calling to salvage what I can.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I’m sure you’ll have a lot to say once you’ve had time to think it over.”

There was a pause. “I wasn’t, you know.”

“You weren’t?” Eva felt sick.

“No.”

“I didn’t think I could feel worse.” Eva rubbed her forehead.

“You didn’t have to tell me.”

“Yes, I did. Because I like you, and because I didn’t like me when I betrayed your privacy. It was playing dirty. You deserved an explanation and an apology.”

Dimple didn’t say anything.

Eva dug for the right words. “I don’t expect that apologizing makes everything okay. Confessions like this do more to relieve the guilty than appease the victim, but I really want you to know that it was a terrible, selfish mistake, and I’m deeply sorry for it. I only hope I slammed the lid on Pandora’s box fast enough to save Integrity.”

Dimple sighed. “I appreciate your honesty. Lord knows, I’m no paragon.”

“I’d like to make it up to you.”

“That’s not necessary. If I didn’t expect to get my toes stepped on from time to time, I’d have chosen a more nurturing environment than Hollywood, like a jellyfish-infested shark tank.”