Heads or Tails (15 page)

“You’ll be back by four-thirty, same as if Mercedes was here?”

I gathered the baby in my arms and nodded, thumbing the tears away from my eyes. I was hit with the surprisingly secure feeling that often overcame me when I first met Jesse, when I began to understand that he had an instinct for giving me precisely what I needed. And that he knew what I needed even when I wasn’t wise enough to identify it myself.

Ninety minutes later, our plan for the day formulated, my briefcase packed, I guided Jesse around the flat, noting various baby items and their uses.

“Call me with questions,” I said, clasping his forearm.

He held the baby under one arm, not unlike a football. I’d seen Sarah hold Henry and Lily like that but with Gretchen, I feared I’d squeeze too hard and she’d barf on the floor. With his free hand, Jesse thumbed a text.

“Sorry,” he said, looking down. “Client message.” He hiked the baby higher under his arm and looked up at me. I waited for him to finish.

“Thanks again.” I tried to mold a facial expression that conveyed the depths of my gratitude. My heart felt full, the way it did when I’d first noticed that he’d moved Marigold’s picture from the top of his nightstand into its drawer.

“Get home as soon as you can, Stevens,” he said, looking up at me briefly before turning his attention back to his text. Then he added, “This isn’t my baby.”

As if I needed a reminder.

The following evening, the manufactured snap of a camera shutter startled me awake. A flash of disorientation enveloped me and it took me several moments to recall where I was, even who I was. And what the heaviness and moisture on my chest was all about. I peeled my sticky eyes open a crack.

The baby had fallen asleep on my chest, drooling her teething spittle on my shirt.
Right
, I reminded myself.
The baby
.

I struggled to recover the other who-what-where equilibrium. It was Friday, exactly two weeks since I’d flown to New York. It was after work. I’d relieved Mercedes at four-thirty.

“What time is it?” I croaked to Jesse, who stood over me, scrolling on his phone to show me the photo he’d just snapped.

“Seven-fifteen. Check it out.” He handed me the phone. I could smell the strangely pleasing perspiration scent of his clothing. He’d ridden his bike to and from work, taking an extra loop through Golden Gate Park as part of tri training.

How long had Gretchen and I been asleep? From my disabling grogginess, the vanished illumination and the circumference of her drool, it must have been quite awhile. I glanced sideways at the phone, only half taking in the photo of the baby and me sound asleep. I wish he’d have just let me sleep instead of waking me with the damn picture.

“Cute?” he asked, though his tone was more of a declaration than a question.

“A portrait of exhaustion,” I replied, drowsily pushing myself up into a slumped seated position.

“But still cute.”

For years, Jesse and I had privately mocked friends who emailed or posted precisely those kinds of photos of their kids. We’d giggle about the overly staged shots and how in many cases clearly the parents had little grasp of how unattractive their kids were. In those moments, we delighted in our coupledom, our tacit vow never to take such preposterous photos. And because Jesse and I shared that resolute desire not to be parents ourselves, it never felt isolating, despite the ever-diminishing population of people like us. So his taking the photo of me and the baby — let alone admiring it afterwards — was unexpected, to say the least. I wondered what he’d do with it. Would he print the picture out and slip it in the drawer next to Marigold’s?

I shook my head to dissipate the grogginess. Gretchen stirred, making lip-smacking motions that, we’d deduced through trial and error, meant that she was hungry.

“I’ll get it,” he said, gesturing to the kitchen where the formula and bottles peppered our counter.

“Thanks.” I held Gretchen steady with one hand and with the other, I propped myself further upright on the couch. “Shit, I hope this late evening nap doesn’t screw up her sleeping schedule tonight.”

“You and me both,” he called from the kitchen. “I’d sort of hoped we could have a ‘date night.’”

Date night was our code for sex regardless of whether an actual date was involved. Date nights usually happened like clockwork every Friday. Sometimes I’d have to splash water on my face in the bathroom at work to temper the anticipation of being naked with Jesse a few hours later. Needless to say, we’d been a bit off schedule the last couple of weeks. Baby awake or not, I simply couldn’t imagine mustering the energy or enthusiasm for sex. So I didn’t respond to his suggestion.

“Here you go, G.” He held up the bottle and I turned the baby to face him. She reached out and grabbed it eagerly.

“What’d you call her?”

“When I was watching her yesterday, I realized what a — sorry — ugly name Gretchen is.”

“Don’t apologize. I agree. Well, maybe ugly’s too strong of a word. But it definitely doesn’t fit her.” The baby tugged the bottle from her mouth, creating a suctioning sound that made her laugh. It sounded like “Wheeooo.”

“Right.” He sat close to me. Still sweaty from the workout, his skin was warm and damp and he smelled salty. “Obviously, we can’t change her name,” he continued. “Margot said, ‘Take my baby.’ But she didn’t say you could give her a whole new identity. So, I don’t know, I just started calling her G.”

My reaction called to mind an old expression of Virginia’s. Whenever I told her I was going upstairs to study or I was riding my bike to a friend’s house down the street or doing anything relatively inconsequential, she’d say, “Don’t make me no mind,” though “mind” was pronounced more like “mine.” It meant something like, “This doesn’t affect me one way or the other.” But she’d sometimes also say it when she did care but professed not to. Like when I called home from Egan Academy and told her that I planned to visit during an upcoming three-day weekend. “Don’t make me no mind,” she’d said, handing the phone over to my mom. But I knew from her stiff but bear-like hugs that she was always thrilled when I came home.

“G,” I replied simply. “I like it.”

A few hours later, Sarah texted. “I saw the pic that J snapped of U & the baby. Shld I flush my birth control pills so we can get preggers at the same time?”

“Uh, no,” I wrote back.

“C’mon…J seems 2 have taken to having a baby around.”

Jesse and Sarah were friends independent of me. What had he been saying to her? Had G’s arrival triggered a behind-the-scenes discussion about changing our long-held life plan?

In my own frequent text exchanges with Sarah over the last few days, I’d debated telling her about Abe. But because meeting a neighbor was, essentially, a non-event, the mere fact of my reporting something so inherently uninteresting would reveal that Abe stirred less-than-normal feelings in me. They were feelings that I couldn’t quite label either. So I held back, not only because Sarah loved Jesse, but because part of what was alluring about Abe was that he was a secret, a secret I wanted all to myself. That not one soul knew we’d even met was part of the thrill. “Just trying 2 stay above water over here w/ this baby,” was my noncommittal response.

“J would make a great dad.”

I rolled the phone in my hands, considering my reply. Our pledge not to have children had nothing to do with me doubting Jesse. I was intimately familiar with his wonderful qualities — loyalty, intensity, creativity — and how they’d probably translate seamlessly into fatherhood. Though he’d grumbled at first about taking in Margot’s baby, he’d not only started to come around but in fact had proven himself a nimble baby wrangler. When I returned home from my meetings the day before, she was clean, freshly changed and playing happily in the living room with a large ball of tin foil that Jesse had wadded up just for her enjoyment.
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
I wondered, while simultaneously admiring how tidy the house was and how relaxed both he and the baby seemed.

“No doubt,” I finally wrote back.

I was not normally a fan of frantic Brazilian music but sitting in Peet’s coffee on Cole Street, the flutes and horns of samba transported me.

It was Saturday. I’d hardly been alone in two weeks. When Jesse and I determined that someone needed to run to the store for milk, bread, apples and bananas, I volunteered. I needed some fresh air. G had been lying on her back on the play mat that Sarah loaned us, using her hands to swat at the black and white fabric mobile animals. When I squatted to scoop her up, planning to bring her along in the stroller, Jesse made a “leave her” gesture with his hand.

“You’ll watch her?”

He nodded. And I’d almost wept.

I walked the two blocks slowly, wanting to slurp the brisk November air that delivered much needed oxygen to my system. Uncharacteristically, I hadn’t even put on sunscreen. I believed that I could use a little vitamin D given all the recent indoor babysitting combined with my complete lack of running or biking. As I caught a whiff of cinnamon emanating from Peet’s, I decided on a whim to stop in. I ordered a chai latte and a package of Madelines I’d bring home for G, remembering that when Sarah’s kids were babies, they loved gnawing on the soft cookies with their emerging teeth while she and I gossiped at cafes.

I sat at the high counter at the window, watching the Cole Valley foot traffic — hippies from the nearby Haight, hipsters returning from a music festival in Golden Gate Park, and thirty-somethings pushing strollers, many with dogs in tow. Though Bernal Heights was gaining on it, charming and centrally located Cole Valley was a prime spot for young families, something that until recently, Jesse and I had lamented.

Aware that Jesse was “on duty” (as we’d come to describe whoever was watching the baby), I checked the time and vowed to sit for a maximum of ten minutes. Given how nutty life had been the last two weeks — I was convinced I was still jet-lagged from the flight home from New York — ten minutes was a treat. It reminded me of something Sarah once said, that after becoming a mother, she’d come to love going to the dentist because she
had
to just lie back in stillness. “It’s better than a yoga class,” she insisted. I was starting to get it.

A young white couple came in, each holding the small hand of an African-American toddler. The mother considered the menu high up behind the cash register. The dad side-mouthed “the usual” to her while he entertained the boy.

Seeing that obviously adopted child made me think of all the couples so desperate for babies. There was a disconnect, it seemed, between those couples and the hordes of unwanted children. I’d recently watched a television documentary about the overburdened foster care system, which also highlighted the concurrent increase in international adoptions, which were comparatively easy and speedy. Although I didn’t want children, I couldn’t imagine giving up a child that I had. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine wanting one so desperately — the way that Margot had.

“Mama, mama!” the toddler boy yelled, smacking the food display case with his palm, right by the chocolate milk.

Then I thought of my own parents, what they’d lost in Julia, who’d gotten sick right around the age of that boy and suffered for the next two years of her little life. I thought of what they’d gained in having me. Caring for G for just two weeks, I could see for the first time how keeping me at arms’ length, which had always felt in cruel to me, must have been simply necessary to them. If keeping their distance was also painful to them, they didn’t let on. And it likely couldn’t have been any more excruciating than loving something you could lose, a fact they knew from experience.

As desperate as I was to get G back with Margot — or at least Jean — a vague, almost imperceptible ache had erupted behind my sternum as I thought of flying her back to New York and then returning to San Francisco alone.

The couple with the toddler left, he happily sipping chocolate milk from a cardboard container. The unexpected feelings that snuck up on me when I imagined taking G back inspired me to give Jean a call. I hadn’t received an update in a week. I grabbed my latte, and moved to the bench outside Peet’s so as not to disturb people inside. I dialed Jean.

“Allo?” a woman with a Jamaican or vaguely French accent answered. I held my cell out to make sure I’d called the right number. The screen read, “Jean Home.”

“Um, hi. Is Jean there, please?”

“Nooo, Miss. Sorry. Missus Jean is in the hospital.” The last word was pronounced “ah-spi-tal.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Missus Jean. She sick.” Outside of Peet’s, a dog pooped and the man walking him crouched down to pick it up using a rectangular beige plastic bag that had once protected an issue of
The Chronicle
.

“Who is this?”

“Who’s
this
?” the woman asked.

Fair enough, I thought. I explained who I was. It turned out the woman was Jean’s weekly house cleaner. I was lucky to have called while she was there. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known what was going on — though in this case, as Sarah would probably say, ignorance is bliss.

“Missus Jean. She suffered a small stroke. She’s at Lenox Hill Hospital.”

I thanked her and hung up. After searching for the hospital’s number, I was transferred several times before finally getting put through to Jean’s room.

“Awwwoooowww.” Oh no. I tightened my eyes shut. My throat constricted.

“Jean, it’s Hilly,” I managed to say.

“Hiwwwwyyy.” The stroke had clearly impacted her speech and in that instant I knew that my long held back-up plan had vanished. She said something else, which I took to mean, “Hold on.”

“Hello, this is Jean’s nurse.”

Though I’d craved it earlier, daylight was suddenly too much for me to bear. Keeping my eyes shut and still shielding them with my palm, I explained once again my connection to this woman, whose granddaughter was in my care. I didn’t explain that Jean had actually altered the course of my life and that, as a result, I was forever indebted to her. The nurse, in turn, explained that Jean was scribbling notes on paper and that she’d read them to me. Over the next ten minutes, between Jean’s relayed messages and the nurse’s additional input, I learned that Jean had indeed suffered a small stroke, which aggravated her Parkinson’s. She’d stay hospitalized at least another few days and then required a nurse at home for a few weeks after that. Margot, meanwhile, was improving at the in-patient center, but was still in no condition to be discharged or to safely care for her baby.