Deeper Illusions (24 page)

Chapter
Forty-Four

“Oh, shit,” I said. “My water just broke.”

“Well, come on, girl, let's go,” Lena, who was a lesbian hippy, was more than happy to take me to the hospital. “Hey, Chaz, I gotta take this lady to the hospital. Can you find people to cover for us?”

Chaz, a dreadlocked boy of about 22, appeared and agreed to call people to come in to cover.

“Thanks, Chaz,” Lena said, as I panicked a little, breathing in and out, in and out, in and out.

“This is your first?” Lena asked.

I simply nodded, and kept breathing in and out.

“Don't be too afraid of the pain. It's not that bad. Well, I lied. It is that bad. But don't be afraid,” she said, as we made our way to her 1987 Datsun.

I shook my head. She had no idea how much physical and emotional pain I had been through. No earthly idea. No matter how much pain this would cause me, it would be cake compared to everything else.

She sped to the hospital, with me in the passenger's side doing my breathing like I was taught in my Lamaze class. Then
the hospital orderlies got a wheelchair for me, and pushed me into the ER. I immediately was admitted to the OB/Gyn unit, where there was a team of doctors around me telling me to push. I pushed harder and harder. The pain was excruciating, but not as bad as the pain from the rape and Rochelle attacking me, and my emotional pain from losing Ryan, which was the most excruciating of all.

As I suspected, this pain was nothing compared to everything else.

Finally, after about an hour of my bearing down and pushing, at the urging of the doctors, I heard a cry. I was exhausted and spent, but when the doctors brought me Dalilah, all the pain in birthing her was forgotten.

I looked in her face, and I knew. I knew exactly who she belonged to. She had a delicate little nose, and precious rose-bud lips.

And the greenest eyes I had ever seen on anybody.

With the exception of her father.

Chapter Forty-Five

With the baby here, I found that it was going to be a problem trying to make ends meet. The money from the Whole Foods would no longer stretch, so I had to think of something else. Day care alone would cost some $1,200 a month
for the very cheapest place, so Lena and I decided to move in together and watch each other's children while we alternated shifts.

We talked about the deal over dinner one night. The Whole Foods gang went out to a restaurant in China Town to celebrate a co-workers birthday
. I brought my newborn daughter along, and put her in her carrier next to me. She dozed while I had fun with my new friends.

“So,” Lena said, “how are you liking this city so far?”

“Great. It’s really expensive, though. It’s kinda discouraging, really.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Try to find a house to buy here. No, really, try. Do you know that the median home price for this town is around a million dollars?”

“I believe it,” I said.

“So, what’s your story? We’ve all been curious about you, just popping up out of the Midwest, without a real job that would require you to leave your home.”

“No story. I just needed a change, that’s all. I really had a desire to live by the ocean. That’s always been my thing.”

“This city isn’t really known for its ocean. Way too cold on the beaches, and the water is absolutely freezing year-round. If you wanted a coastal town, you probably should’ve looked further south, like in Los Angeles or San Diego.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “I just like being close to the water. The beaches here are actually very peaceful, just because they are so deserted.”

Somebody from the table got up to order some dim sum for the table, and we all dug into the bite-sized entrees eagerly. It was delicious. “See,” I said, holding up a dumpling on the end of my chopstick, “this is why I moved to this city. I don’t think that I can find Chinese food this good in my hometown.”

Then I asked Lena “what about you? How long have you been living here?”

“All my life,” she said. “My parents lived in the Haight-Ashbury district when I was growing up, and I got involved with all kinds of social justice projects. I would never want to leave this city, no matter how much it costs to buy a home, just because no other city has the same vibe. I’ve visited many different places, and I have come to find out that there really is no place like home for me.”

Frank, another co-worker, asked me “so, you’re a single mother. Are you looking to date anybody? I mean, a lot of times a woman doesn’t really want to date when she has a child, because she doesn’t want a revolving door.”

“I haven’t thought about it,” I said.

“I hate to pry, but where is the father?” he asked.

“Not sure. It was kinda a one-night stand type of deal.
I never got his name.”

“Ah,” he said, looking at Dalilah. “Well, from the looks of things, you chose your one-night stand well. Your daughter is absolutely stunning.”

“Yes,” I said. “That she is.”

Another co-worker looked at Dalilah and exclaimed “look at those eyes. You rarely see an infant with eyes that color. Usually they’re blue.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She is unusual. She was actually born with eyes that color.”

“Well, she’s beautiful, that’s for sure.”

I smiled and took a sip of my green tea. “Thank you,” I said.

The Lena got up and did an impromptu belly dance to some of the music that was playing. She was actually quite good. She convinced me to get up with her, while she showed me some moves. The rest of our party was cheering us on and laughing. I guessed that they were drinking a bit, but I was completely sober, so I was feeling self-conscious.

I found myself having a good time, perhaps for the first time since I found out about Natalie. Lena was a lot of fun, and she invited me over to her apartment to watch some movies. So, after dinner, Dalilah and I headed over to her tiny studio apartment, and I sat on a bean bag on the floor and prepared to watch
Shaun of the Dead.

Lena brought out some popcorn. “So,”she said. “Are you having problems making ends meet, what with day care and all?”

“God, yes,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t gone back to work yet, but, when I do, I’m gonna have to use my Visa cash advance money to pay for it. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“I have a plan, then,” she said. “Just wait right here, I need to go next door and get my son.”

At that, she went out the door and came back in a few minutes later with a beautiful half-Asian child who was a few months older than Dalilah. The little boy, like Dalilah, was fast asleep, his little hand curled up towards his mouth. “This is Samuel,” Lena said. “His father was a turkey baster.”

“Aw,” I said. “How cute. How does the turkey baster thing work?”

“That’s just a joke. Actually, I convinced one of my best friends to father Samuel for me. He doesn’t want custody or anything, he just did it so that I could have a kid.”

“Do you get child support?”

“No, I couldn’t do that to him. He did it as a favor to me, that wouldn’t be right to make him pay like that.”

“So, the
n, we’re kinda in the same boat,” I said. “Neither of us are getting child support, and both of us are single mothers,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “So, I was thinking that maybe we could help each other out, here. I thought that we could find a place to live, and be roommates. We could get the store to give us different shifts, so that I could watch Dalilah when you work, and you could watch Samuel when I work.”

I thought that this was a great idea. I was lonely and starving for adult companionship anyhow,  and I needed to cut my cost of living and find somebody to watch Dalilah. It seemed that all of these wishes were fulfilled with my proposed living arrangement with Lena.

So, w
e found a small two bedroom bungalow for $2,600, which would still be a stretch for both us to make, but we put together a workable budget that would presumably help us make ends meet. What would happen when our kids got too old to stay with us in our respective bedrooms was an open question.

Everything was going good with this arrangement, and I felt a bit recovered from my Ryan emotional devastation, because I had a part of him in my beautiful daughter. I saw Ryan in everything about her, even in her newborn state. She was beautiful, docile and happy.

Just like her father.

Lena even agreed to watch her while I went on my first date with Brent, who was a guy I met while checking at the Whole Foods. He was nice enough, was around my age, and it was a plus that he was at the Whole Foods, because it meant that he was at least somewhat sophisticated.

I really didn’t want to go, but I was lonely.

But, when I started getting ready, I started to panic at the very thought of going out with somebody new. It wasn’t just that I was still passionately and completely in love with Ryan, although that certainly didn’t help matters. There was the matter of intimacy. I hadn’t let Ryan intimately touch me, even before the Nat thi
ng. He didn’t even try. He knew how broken I was because of what Andrew did to me. I despaired that I would ever let somebody touch me like that again. If I wouldn’t let Ryan, the love of my life, do that to me, I certainly wasn’t going to let this Brent person, or anybody else for that matter, touch me like that.

Of course, this wa
s our first date. I hoped that something like sex wouldn’t come up, and, if it did, I would address it directly. I would tell him that I was raped and I couldn’t think about doing something like that.

Then watch him run.

He showed up right at 6, to take me to dinner someplace on the Pier. I told him that what I really wanted to do was to watch the sea lions. Those animals were absolutely fascinating to me, and I found myself watching them for hours on end. I even took Dalilah down there, although she was far too young to appreciate them. They were there by the hundreds, barking, preening, and forcing each other off the pier. I found them hilarious, and I found that I could lose myself watching them. I was especially fascinated with the babies, with their protective mommas there. I felt the same about Dalilah – a protective momma sea lion. I had always loved sea lions, even when I lived in Kansas City – when I went to the zoo there, all I wanted to do was see the sea lions and the hippos. Here they were in their natural habitat, and they were my greatest form of escape.

My only form of escape, really.

So, we made a date to go to the Sea Lion Café, which was no doubt going to be bustling on a Friday night.

When he showed up, he looked
dapper in a button down shirt, jacket, sandals and jeans. I wasn’t digging the sandals so much. I hoped that I could overlook it - I had dumped people for less, I was ashamed to say. Well, not really. I had dumped people because the chemistry wasn’t there. Ryan could wear as many sandals as he wants, but that wouldn’t matter because he was, well, Ryan. Gorgeous, yes, but more than that. He was…my soul mate.

But Brent
had dimples when he smiled, which usually are a major turn-on for me. Usually.

I smiled back, but I wasn’t feeling the smile inside.

I wasn’t feeling anything but polite.

“Have fun, you two!” Lena called from the living room.

“Thanks, Lene, I owe you one.”

“Yeah, I’ll take you up on that in the 12
th
of never.” Lena was having problems finding a suitable partner herself.

Over dinner, Brent tried to get to know me. “So, you went to school at Ol’ Mizzou. What brings you out here?”

I figure it would sound pretty stupid for me to tell him that I came for the sea lions, so I said “I just think it’s the most beautiful city in the world. The last time I was here, I saw the city on foot. I must’ve walked ten miles that day from the Pier, through Japan Town, over to Haight Ashbury, and up through Pacific Heights. I have never seen a city with such old-world charm.”

He raised his eyebrows. “And you were a lawyer back in Missouri?” He was obviously suspicious on how I went from lawyer to Whole Foods checker.

“Yes.”

“And you moved out here on a wing and a prayer? This is a really expensive city to live in, you know.”

“Yeah, so I’m finding out.”

“I see. If you don’t mind my asking, you said that you have a daughter who is just a few months old. What’s the story there?”

I started to panic. How would I explain any of it? My story is just too weird for anybody to understand. So I said “that was a turkey baster conception. I really wanted a child, and figured I’m not getting any younger, so…”

Now he was looking incredulous. “You’re just kinda a play by ear kinda gal, aren’t you? Just go where the wind blows, bring a child into the world without knowing how to support her.”

“Are you judging me?”

“No. But you strike me as somebody who doesn’t think about
the consequences of the decisions she makes.”

Truer words were never spoken.

But he doesn’t know the half of it.

“Uh, perhaps this date wasn’t such a good idea,” I said.

We ate in silence for the rest of the meal, and I insisted on splitting the check afterwards.

I wouldn’t have to explain my rape to Brent after all.

I didn’t try to date anybody else after that. To tell the truth, getting up the courage to even go out with him took a lot out of me. So, I decided just to do my work, and raise my child, and be happy with that. Nobody would ever compare to Ryan, anyhow, so it was no use even trying to find somebody who could take his place.

  Then, one day, Lena came home from her shift at the Whole Foods and simply said “Why didn't you tell me?”

I was sitting on the floor with her child, Samuel, playing blocks with him, while Dalilah was in her crib above my head. I somehow knew just what she was talking about.

Still, I played dumb. “Tell you what?”

She shook her head. “Is this your husband?” She had the old
People
magazine in her hand.

“Well, what do you think? That's me there, isn't it?”

“Why didn't you tell me that you're rich?”

“Because I'm not rich, that's why.”

“Bullshit.” At that, she gave me another article that she printed off the Internet. It was story about my divorce from Ryan that also appeared in another issue of
People,
but was not the cover story. “Says here that you own a painting that has a value of $120 million, and you also got a $50 million cash settlement.”

“That's not my money,” I said, simply.

“Then whose is it?”

I never thought that I would have to explain this to anybody. Why I thought that, I don't know. Naive, I guess.

“Well, it's technically my money. But I want no part of it. I didn't earn it, and I don't want it.”

“Nevertheles
s, it's your money. Good god, you mean that we could be living it up in the Pacific Heights, instead of living here in this dump?”