Reckless Years Page 12

  I feel such rage in me. Fury at the Universe. Fury at myself for believing for even a minute that things could be different.

  And when the rage subsides, it’s terror. Dread like something creeping up in the middle of the night.

  Later

  It’s almost 3 a.m. I can’t sleep. Kieran, I started you a letter. I wrote more than ten pages. Then I started it again and wrote another ten pages. I could write a hundred pages just marveling at your existence.

  He said he’d call today, but he didn’t. Today marks the first twenty-four hours of no contact. Please don’t do this to me, Kieran.

  I think, you still have your pearls.

  I think, what are you talking about? You die alone. A few hunks of spun sand from an irritated oyster won’t make a difference.

  Sunday, December 3, 2006

  Summer is chopping beets for a kale-and-brewer’s-yeast salad. She’s crying a little as she chops. We’ve been talking about Ben. She’s known Ben and Marie almost as long as I have.

  “What else you gonna add to that salad?” I say to distract her.

  “Sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds,” she sobs.

  “That sounds good,” I say.

  “Heath?” she says.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m scared.”

  I have an image of Summer at fourteen, slim-hipped and flat-chested, a long-legged beauty with acres of white-blond hair in cut-up punk-rock T-shirts. She’d been living with her ex-stepmother after her mother had abandoned her to her father, and then her father had abandoned her in favor of the next-door neighbor. The ex-stepmother reminded her regularly that she wasn’t being paid enough to take care of her, and the ex-stepsister drove around in a convertible and dated an outfielder from the Baltimore Orioles while Summer lived in a tiny side bedroom. Quite the Cinderella story. Although so far, no glass slipper and no prince.

  I start to cry.

  “Summer?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m scared too.”

  Monday, December 4, 2006

  Josh calls. News of Ben’s accident has reached him out in LA. He says, “Heather, when I first heard, all I could think was thank God it wasn’t you.”

  I think, this man loves me. What have I done? What have I done?

  At night, I dream again that I can’t find where I live. I know there’s a red wall out there and if I can find it, I will be home. But I don’t know where home is. I think, wait, if I have a home out there, have I been paying the mortgage on it? Will I be foreclosed on? I can’t afford rent and a mortgage.

  There are Indian-print bedspreads in this apartment in my dream. The place is filthy. It’s the kind of place where people walk around in their bare feet and don’t care that their soles are black with grime. It’s the commune my father lived on again. This isn’t where I live, I think. And then I’m trying to run but I can’t even move. Total terror.

  Tuesday, December 5, 2006

  On the Amtrak down to DC for Eleanor’s baby shower. Ben’s mom said she’d be okay without me for two days.

  Out the window, the leafless trees fly by in the stark winter afternoon light.

  Later

  I’ve never seen Eleanor so happy. When she picks me up at Union Station she is laughing so much she has to rest her head on the steering wheel. “Am I not the most pregnant woman you’ve ever seen in your life?” she keeps asking me. “Am I not? Am I not?” If you let her, Eleanor will ask you the same question five hundred times. It reminds me of the way I felt in Dublin—when I was smiling so much I’d start laughing. Her cup runneth over, I think. And I can’t help it, there’s a frozen hostility in my chest that leaves me stiff. Why does she have everything while I have nothing, I think.

  When we get to the house, she doesn’t even take off her coat or let me take mine off. She’s pulling me by the hand to show me the baby’s room—there’s a white crib and little orange and green circular rugs she’s placed all over the floor. And she shows me the dressing table, which she says she made her husband sand down and paint white. And he did. That’s the part that amazes me—and it hurts, like someone’s knocked me in the head. She married a man who when she didn’t like the finish on the baby’s dressing table, he sanded it down and painted it white for her. Just like that. Just to make her happy.

  I go into the bathroom and put my head in my hands. I can’t even count the times I’ve spent getting my shit together in bathrooms at Stein residences. Everyone in Eleanor’s family is a novelist, heading a department at some major university, or having a MoMA retrospective. Their homes are filled with awards and Picasso sketches the way other people’s houses are filled with magazines. And I’ve spent time in almost all of their bathrooms trying to compose myself. I still remember going to Eleanor’s house for the first time. I was in first grade. The house was clean. The grass was mowed. The family ate dinner together every night. All those years growing up, I thought, why her and not me? See, I always thought Eleanor and I were the same. Twins, she used to say. We could have been sparring partners, except she’d had the best coaches in the world, while I was just in the ring swinging wildly.

  And if the self-pity isn’t making you hate me, this will.

  All those years I was married and Eleanor was so desperate for a husband and children, I actually felt the Universe had evened things out a bit. What a horrible thing to say, but there it is. She’s my best friend, and I didn’t want her to have everything.

  At the shower, I barely talk. I just work. Pile up cucumber sandwiches on Provençal-style plates. Lay out scones and Danishes. Arrange teacups. Eleanor’s mom, who I’ve known forever, is chain-smoking Parliament cigarettes. She’s an impressively thin woman in dark-tinted glasses, and modern jewelry. She was just named president of the American Historical Association. Eleanor keeps saying, “Mom, it’s 2006, you can’t just go around smoking everywhere.” But her mother waves her away. Eleanor whispers to me, “Mom went crazy. She spent nine hundred dollars on baby clothes. I told her to take it all back but she said, no way, it was too much fun.”

  I more think of her mother cooking coq au vin or delivering personal anecdotes about Derrida than shopping for baby clothes. But I guess all mothers long for grandchildren. Eleanor’s aunt, in matte red lipstick, a neat black bob, and a herringbone jacket, comes up and they converse momentarily in French.

  Our friend Faith comes. I’ve barely seen her since her second child was born, and that was more than a year ago. She and I were the kids in the after-school program who’d still be there at five, hoping our parents remembered to pick us up. Faith looks terrible. I can’t put my finger on it exactly. Not fat, as Faith is the skinniest person in the world, but it’s as if she’s given herself a layer of insulation. There’s something far away in her eyes.

  The bags of baby clothes and teddy bears begin to swim before me as Eleanor opens presents. I can’t stop thinking about baby Alex. The way he rests his head on my shoulder. His soft breathing when he falls asleep. I think, you will never have a child, Heather. You weren’t destined to have the kind of life other people have. I never wanted children, ever. And then one day I thought maybe I did. But then I looked at Josh and realized if I had a baby I’d be taking care of two people for the rest of my life.

  Later

  At night, in a room with a sign hanging on it saying “The Heather Chaplin Guest Bedroom,” I’m not so much asleep as knocked unconscious. It’s like I’m buried underground. And I’m sweating, profusely. I can feel it running down my chest, out my head and through my hair, down my legs, over my ass. It’s soaking my T-shirt and pajama bottoms. I have to get up, eyes still closed, shivering as I stand in the darkness and peel them off because they are freezing me. I’m shivering as I climb under the blankets. Then I’m dead asleep again, except I can still feel the sweat pouring out of me.

  I wake up again around 4 a.m. I have an image of a shotgun in my mind. It’s placed against my forehead, and I let myself indulge, for just a minute, in the sens
e of peace that would come from pulling the trigger. I think, Kieran, why have you abandoned me? I’m in a room with the lights slowly dimming, and soon it will be dark.

  There’s not enough love in the world to save you now, Heather.

  Thursday, December 7, 2006

  Back in New York.

  Seth and I stop to eat on Delancey Street. Seth can’t stop thanking me for taking care of Alex.

  “You have no idea what a relief it is to everyone up at the hospital,” he says. “Besides, when did you get so good with children? You’re a natural.”

  Praise from my brother! It’s like sun on my face. Did Seth think I would let him go through this alone? Seth is doggedly loyal. Did he not know I am too?

  Alex is on my lap and I feed him cream cheese and listen to the couple behind us bickering in Russian. Seth reaches across the table and tickles Alex’s belly, making him gurgle and grin his single-toothed grin. He drools a little when he smiles, so I dab at the corners of his mouth with my napkin.

  “Remember going out to dinner with Zaidie?” I say, inclining my head toward the old Russian couple. “How he’d chew up all his fish and then regurgitate a little pile of bones on his plate?”

  Seth tilts his head to one side and raises his eyebrows.

  “Or how he’d drink Shirley Temples all through dinner but still end up singing in Yiddish at the top of his lungs?”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Seth says.

  “Speaking of crazy old men, does your father know what’s going on?” I ask.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Seth says. “But I did talk to your mother.”

  This is how we speak of our parents.

  “She’d like to come and help out, but she isn’t feeling herself just now,” Seth says.

  Our mother hasn’t been feeling herself for as long as I can remember.

  “Count your blessings,” I say.

  We’re on our way to Ben and Marie’s apartment. No one has been back since the accident. Seth’s whole face sags as we let ourselves in. He touches the mail, runs a hand over the kitchen counter. There are rotting vegetables in the fridge, which we dump into a trash can that’s still got trash in it. I remember helping clean out Gabriel’s apartment. His razor in the bathroom with bristles still clinging to it. A coffee cup in the sink.

  “Come on, Seth,” I say. “Let’s just grab their stuff and get out of here.”

  Seth is wandering around the apartment, half looking at things, picking up a magazine in the living room, tossing a pillow from the floor back onto the sofa.

  “Seth,” I say. His eyes drift to mine. I walk up to him and put my hand on his back, rubbing in a gentle circle. Somewhat to my surprise he doesn’t jump away. I nod encouragingly. “Come on,” I say. “I’ll help you. Just tell me what we need to get.”

  Has my brother ever let me help him before?

  Even though it’s only four, it’s dark by the time we’re back outside on the pavement in front of Seward Tower. Seth gulps the air, runs a hand over his face. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he says.

  I put my hand on his back again. “I know, dude,” I say. “I know.”

  Later

  Tonight, I’m alone in the house. I’m listening to the Wailers. This train is bound for glory, they sing. Oh lord, why is it so hard? I feel so weak and ashamed of my own weakness. I don’t want to be a quivering, needy female. Look at me, waiting to be saved by some stranger from across the Atlantic. I should be strong and not long for salvation in the darkness of long nights or spring afternoons I can’t touch. This train is bound for glory, the Wailers sing. Oh, come to me, salvation, I think. I’m weak, I admit it. I want to feel this glory. The glory of your light. I think God only means not feeling alone.

  Friday, December 8, 2006

  This morning, Ben’s mom came home from running errands and just totally broke down, collapsed into her easy chair, her coat still on, her purchases on her lap, sobbing. She said, Go! Go! And I went. I suddenly, desperately, needed to get out of there. Sometimes the depths of this tragedy, the darkness of it, the horror that can’t be mitigated no matter how I turn it over in my mind feels like it’s sucking the air out of me. So I admit it, I fled. And now I’m sitting in a vegetarian Chinese restaurant on Avenue A listening to the chop, chop, chop of a knife against a butcher’s block from somewhere deep in the recesses of the kitchen.

  I have this sense today that if I accidentally open my mouth the wrong way, the fury in me would cause all of Avenue A to collapse on itself, buildings falling, people screaming, dust reaching up to the sky. I had this feeling a lot when I was a kid. I remember smashing up the tiles in our bathroom with the head of a shower nozzle. I remember throwing all the books in my room against the wall and shrieking until my throat was sore—all the while hearing the dum-dum-dum of Seth’s bass from his bedroom next door, steady as a metronome.

  By the time I was a grown-up, it hadn’t been like that for a long time. When Josh first yelled at me, I’d almost keeled over in horror. I’d never been in a screaming fight in my life. But the fury leaked out. Let’s be honest, it must have. Josh would start screaming, I’d be thinking, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. But not saying a word, completely impassive, with a look on my face that must have been about as friendly as a visit from the Grim Reaper. And that’s a kind of anger too, isn’t it? Not speaking. I believe it’s called withholding.

  Sunday, December 10, 2006

  I take care of Alex during the day. I long for Kieran at night. What else is there to say? A three-year-old child has been killed. What else is there to say?

  Monday, December 11, 2006

  Marie is awake. The doctors have been saying for about a week it was possible. But today it actually happened. And now the doctors are saying there may not be any permanent spinal damage. I spin Alex around the room. He gurgles and I say, “Your mommy is going to come home soon. Will you like that?” But he just looks at me with his implacable stare and one-toothed smile and drools a little.

  I never knew it would be so easy to love a baby.

  Wednesday, December 13, 2006

  Last night I finally went out with the game designer. He’s been calling since I got back and I’ve been putting it off and putting it off. Even tonight as I set out from baby Alex’s to meet him, I say in my head, Kieran, are you sure? Is this what you want? Because I don’t want it. But I haven’t heard from you in twelve days. Every night I run home from taking care of Alex to check my email. My heart pounds. All other messages are like cruel jokes. There’s nothing from you, and then it’s just emptiness.

  I don’t understand, Kieran. All those texts just two weeks ago—

  “. . . Chick, chick, are you there, chick? . . .”

  “. . . I hope you’re smiling, girl, as it is the most beautiful smile . . .”

  “. . . Are you sleeping, chick? I wish I were there with you, my hands where they should be and will be again . . .”

  Me writing, “Kieran, are you a mirage?” You writing back immediately, “Jaysus, girl, I hope not.”

  I’m writing this down, because I want it in the official record. I was not making Kieran up. This was how it was just two weeks ago. What happened? What did I do wrong?

  I meet the game designer on the corner of Franklin and Broadway near his company. It’s a gorgeous, strangely warm winter evening. The sky is inky black above the building tops and clear enough that we can see stars. Enormous white clouds roll by, seeming almost to keep pace with us, sometimes obscuring and sometimes parting to reveal a nearly full moon.

  We go to a tiny taqueria on a concrete island between the flow of traffic where Lafayette and Centre Streets merge. There’s a “secret” restaurant downstairs guarded by a skinny kid in a trucker hat and wifebeater, and I think, oh please, Josh was wearing trucker hats and wifebeaters in the early nineties.

  The game designer and I sit at the counter, under the neon glow of pink letters. The game designer is telling me about his ex-fiancée, who j
ilted him a month before their wedding. He says that people keep telling him how sorry they are but that all he can do is think, thank God.

  “If I’d married her, my whole life would have been a nightmare,” he says. “I would have spent the rest of my years taking care of her. I feel so lucky.”

  I’m sitting there thinking how much I like this man—I mean, who gets dumped at the altar and a few months later is talking about how lucky he feels?—when he puts his arm around me. Oh, Kieran, I don’t want to kiss him! If I kiss him, I will be admitting that Dublin is really in the past. But then, that’s the whole reason I’m here, isn’t it?

  It’s a questioning kiss. I see his eyes soften behind his smudged glasses. I think, thank you for feeling this way about me, but if I could, without being rude, I would run from you, out the door and all the way home. But I stay. And not just out of politeness. Don’t you see, Kieran? I have to lay you to rest.

  I let the game designer come home with me. The ride over the Manhattan Bridge is spectacular. Still that black, black sky with the fast-moving clouds, now framed by the arching lights of the bridge, Manhattan receding behind us and Brooklyn looming up ahead as we pass over the black expanse of the East River.

  Sakura huffs indignantly as the game designer follows me inside. Then, as if offended, he trots off to the back of the apartment while we go to the front.

  I roll a joint, pour us whiskey.

  “Oh, Heather Chaplin,” the game designer says as we start to kiss on my couch. “I forgot how delicious you are.”