Fire & Water (26 page)

With each pulse I could see that Jake was waiting for my cue. I licked my lips and was surprised to find them wet and salty. I nodded ever so slightly and sensed the instant, palpable relief of Jake’s exhale. That nod was his green light, his permission to enter the threesome of
us
.

Jake parted Ryan’s blanket with fingers still covered with dried blood. His face softened into a look of adoration. “Look at her. Just look.” As soon as Jake’s fingers touched Ryan, her crying stopped. “Hi, sweet one,” he whispered. He picked her up, his two elegant hands forming a nest. “I’m your impulsive, irresponsible, unforgivable daddy.” He held Ryan as though he’d never done anything his whole life but hold babies.

Alice snapped another picture. She and my dad were so overwhelmed with Ryan’s arrival, they seemed unaware of what brewed beneath the surface between Jake and me. Perhaps the worst of the storm had passed. Alice linked her arm into my dad’s. “A loving father is the best gift a mother can give to a daughter, Katie. Ryan is a lucky girl.”

Perfectly Lovely Funeral

After Ryan was born, Jake devoted himself to proving that he could and would be the loving father and husband he had promised to be. At first, I thought this would last just a few weeks, until the next flight of fancy distracted him. But the weeks turned into months and the months rolled smoothly into years. I completed my five-year surgical residency and was offered a pediatric surgery fellowship at UCSF. In so many ways, our life together was idyllic.

One day, after a long day in the OR, my whole body felt like one big bruise. The metallic odor of anesthesia still lingered in my nostrils, and the muscles in my shoulders were ropy braids. I came home and opened my front door to find Ryan standing at attention, waiting in the entryway. She gripped the thick stalk of a yellow dinner-plate dahlia while the thumb of her other hand rested against her moist lips. Chestnut curls escaped her barrettes. The mere sight of her made every ache disappear.

“Hi, Noodle, is that beautiful flower for me?” I asked, holding the door with my foot while I balanced packages.

She put a hand on her hip, a gesture that made her look more like a teenager than a five-year-old. “Mommy, did you forget about Nana Alice’s birthday party?”

“I absolutely did not,” I said, nodding my head toward a pink bakery box cradled in my arms. “Saint Honoré cake, just as you requested.”

The scents of garlic and rosemary mixed with burning mesquite wood wafted through the house from the patio outside the kitchen. Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” blared from the stereo. From the patio, Jake’s whistling accompaniment trilled high above the melody.

The dahlia tottered above Ryan’s head like an umbrella in a wind, each sway sending another trickle of yellow petals fluttering to the floor beside her feet. “Wow,” I said. “That one’s as big as a pizza.”

“Mommy, you told me not to ’zaggerate.”

“Right you are. But it is pretty big. It does seem to be raining petals, though.”

The garden was one among many of Ryan and Jake’s collaborations. The hillside was lusher than ever, each tier its own world. In every nook, simple sculptures awaited discovery. The hillside that had once been a scene of such destruction now boasted figs, tomatoes, melons, and even olives—all of which nurserymen had said had little hope of success in the foggiest, most coastal climate in San Francisco. Jake disregarded the rules of growing climates in the same way he ignored people who told him that he wouldn’t be able to execute a design.

From the day of her birth, Jake became the gardener that tended the budding blossom of Ryan; nurtured her with affection; stimulated her growth with constant exposure to ideas and experiences; cultivated her imagination by asking her opinions and welcoming her choices. For the first year after she was born, I was fiendishly protective—fearful that Jake’s mania might flower again. I monitored his mood, his medication, his appointments with Dr. Gupta. And Jake complied. By the second year and into the third, I relaxed. Science had won. We had slain the monster of Jake’s mania, subdued it into submission.

Jake had erupted with only minor flares of temper—particularly about his art. But it all seemed more artistic temperament than anything that smacked of the mania I’d witnessed nearly six years before. The sway of our daily life lulled me back into the trust I’d once known.

Ryan at age five stood as tall as most second-graders. Her passport had been stamped with the insignias of fifteen countries. She’d seen wild elephants, the Egyptian pyramids, and the Great Wall, and had crested Machu Picchu in a backpack on Jake’s shoulders. Though I knew I should discourage it, her thumb-sucking seemed the only remaining remnant of a babyhood that had gone by too quickly.

“Daddy made swish-kebab. He’s on the patio cooking them.” Another flurry of petals fell as Ryan’s arms waved. Her eyes, river stone calico like Jake’s, made me feel as if I could fall straight into them and lose myself.

“We used our cucumbers from the garden and made that yummy sauce you like, Mommy.”

“Tzatziki?”

“And I painted placemats for everybody.”

I bent down and kissed her silky cheek. “That’s
shish
-kebab, by the way,” I said heading up the stairs. “Would you tell Daddy I’m home and that I will greet him after my shower when I don’t smell like old socks and vitamin bottles?”

Ryan pinched her nose and giggled.

Climbing the stairs, I freed my hair from its ponytail and tried to run my fingers through the snarled curls. Just then, Ryan’s icy shriek filled the house. I flew down the stairs, expecting to find her bleeding and broken in the foyer. Instead, she stood screaming, staring at the petal-less stalk she held.

“It’s gone! My flower is gone!”

I tried to wrap my arms around her, but she pushed me away.

“Don’t worry. We’ll pick another flower.”

“But that one was the
perfect
one.”

“All living things die, darling. You know that. It’s part of nature.”

Instead of being quieted by my explanation, Ryan’s wails grew louder until I thought my eyes would explode.

“We’ll get another flower. There are lots of beautiful ones out there. Nana Alice won’t even have to know about this one.”

Ryan squinted at me, delivering a steely stare. “
I’ll
know,” she said, her voice a razor’s edge. “I can’t give another flower when I know this was the best one.”

My temples banged. “Clearly it was not the best one, Ryan, because it’s all over the floor.”

She covered her face with her hands and I wasn’t sure if she was crying or plotting my murder. “Ryan, that’s enough. Everyone will be here soon. You don’t want our guests to see you acting like this.”

“You don’t even
care
about the flower. If my flower was in your hospital you would care if it died.”

Ryan was willful, but not usually a brat. “Do you need to take a nap?” I snapped. Suddenly Jake appeared beside us, barbecue tongs in hand. The fear on his face told me he’d envisioned the same broken child that I had.

“It’s dead,” Ryan cried, fat tears rolling down her creamy cheeks. She collapsed into a heap on the floor, laying her head on the blanket of petals that had fallen there.

Jake knelt down beside our crumbled daughter and lifted the bloomless stalk. “Oh, it’s not dead, Ryan.”

Her cries stopped and she lifted her head. “Mommy said it’s dead. It’s
nature
.
Everything dies. She told me.”

Jake looked up at me and shrugged an apology. His voice was calm and kind. “Mommy is right, of course. She is very smart about science. I always consult with her on such matters. But dying is partly science and partly how you choose to look at it.”

Ryan’s face showed her puzzling over the new idea.

“The flower isn’t what it was,” Jake explained. “It is dead in a certain way. But now it’s something else and so it’s alive in a brand new way. Close your eyes.”

Ryan closed her eyes without hesitation, her pink eyelids and feathery lashes flickering.

“Can you see the flower now?” Jake asked.

She nodded.

“As long as you can see it,” he said, “it’s alive in the most important way.”

Ryan opened her eyes, her dark lashes spiky with moisture. “But now I don’t have a present. And it was the most beautiful one, Daddy. I can’t give another flower.”

“Absolutely not,” Jake said. “Another flower won’t do when you know that one was perfect.” He hadn’t even heard her and he’d repeated almost her exact words. Jake looked around the foyer; he picked up an urn that rested in one corner and retrieved a cluster of long, twisted willow branches that he and Ryan had gathered earlier in the day. He licked his thumb and pressed it against one of the fallen petals, and then he pressed it onto the shaft of a branch, wrapping it in brilliant yellow.

Ryan’s eyebrows climbed and Jake’s gaze met hers. “Daddy, maybe we could make Nana some golden branches if we get some more petals from the garden. And the red ones, too. There are lots on the ground. We can put them in one of the stones that we carved into vases. Like a bouquet, but
way
better.”

Jake looked up at me over his shoulder. “If Mommy will stir the polenta, then you and I can make a present, but we’ll have to work very fast.”

Ryan clapped her hands, then she began scooping the petals into a pile. Jake made a hammock of the front of his shirt and Ryan filled it with her gatherings. He looked up at me. “Welcome home.”

“Mommy wasn’t going to let you see her until she wasn’t stinky,” Ryan said with mischief in her voice.

“Tattletale,” I teased. I turned to Jake. “Did you hear from Burt?”

“He’s having dinner with the governor and he’ll call with the good news. It’s all ready but the contract.” Jake smiled, and his face seemed more relaxed than it had in days. He’d been tense and short-tempered awaiting the final signatures approving his grand installation on the Golden Gate. What had at first seemed like a ludicrous idea was now coming to fruition—just as the Path of Stones had six years before. “This is my calling, Kat. This is the art I was born to do.”

“If this approval doesn’t happen, there will be other installations.”

“There
are
no other installations,” he snapped. “This one
will
happen.”

Ryan continued gathering petals. “The Golden Gate Bridge is Daddy’s perfect flower, Mommy.”

“I know, baby. I just—”

“A quick stir of the polenta and then your well-deserved shower,” Jake said. “Everything else is ready for the invasion from Murphy’s Pub.”

“I’ll kiss you when I’ve washed the hospital from my skin.”

“Can’t wait. Hey Noodle, we’d better get moving on this present,” Jake said to Ryan.

They began to walk to the studio, each carrying petals in the hems of their shirts. “I love you, Daddy,” she cooed.

“I love you more,” he said, his words striking the match to their ritual game.

“No,” Ryan grumbled, “I love
you
more.”

As they walked, the exchange continued for another few rounds until Ryan was shouting and Jake was singing his reply, infuriating her further. Sometimes Jake carried on with the game until the playful banter became so competitive that Ryan cried tears of frustration.

“Jake, please!” I called out. “We’ve already had one meltdown.”

As they went into the studio, I overheard him whisper, “But I do love you more.”

* * *

As I stirred, the bubbling polenta batter reminded me of Alice teaching me how to tell when the oatmeal was done.
It’s done when it blows you kisses
, she’d said. I’d stand on a stool over the oatmeal pot and listen for the soft
pah
of the thick porridge. Along with the
pah-p-p-pah
of the polenta, Ryan’s happy sounds erupted from Jake’s studio.

As I stirred, my eyes filled with tears. Jake could console Ryan in ways I never could. Scientific explanations about the how and the why of things always comforted me. I gave her the information she asked for, but Jake soothed her. He was patient and playful. He never needed to scold her because she existed to please him, while she fought with me over every bedtime and wardrobe decision. His kisses on her scuffs and scrapes brought instant healing that nothing I learned in medical school could offer. I repaired other people’s children every day—sutured their wounds, aligned their malformed bones—but I felt ill-equipped when it came to my own child.

I felt ashamed of my small jealousy. This was what every mother wanted, an adoring daddy for their daughters. A tear tumbled down my cheek and fell into the pot that I stirred. The polenta, in return, blew me a kiss.
Pah
.

* * *

“Jake, that might be the finest supper that ever crossed these lips.” Dad’s eyes sparkled as he raised his coffee cup.