Heads or Tails (2 page)

Frank pursed and twisted his lips and dropped his chin, as if to say, “True.” But with characteristic graciousness, what he actually said was, “It’s Thursday. We’re talking New York, not Cairo. Get on a red-eye tonight and be back by Sunday night. Nothing’s gonna happen here between now and then that I can’t handle.”

Just then, Jorge opened the door of the trailer, bringing with him a refreshing blast of late fall breeze. He handed me a subcontractor purchase order for my review and flew back outside, his construction boots on the cheap floors echoing through the room. The phone rang and Frank answered.

I finished my sandwich and folded the white paper wrapper into a neat square before tossing it into the trash. I slipped my feet out of my flats, rotated my ankles and flexed my sore calves.

I had to help Margot, I told myself, no matter what the costs. I pushed aside my concerns about leaving work, hoping that neither the homeowner nor the city would visit the site Friday, and I called United Airlines. Within ten minutes, I was booked on that night’s ten-thirty flight to JFK. I hung up, wincing at the inflated price of the last-minute ticket. My return flight for Sunday was only marginally cheaper.

Jorge shoved his head back into the doorway. His cargo pants were newly covered in splices of blue painter’s tape. “Eee-lar-eee,” he said, “There are two layers — not one — of wallpaper in the dining room. We’re going to need extra time and materials.”

“I’ll add it to the punch list,” I said, pounding out the addition into my computer file. “Muchas gracias.”

Just then, Frank got off his phone call. “Trip all set?”

My throat was parched. Swallowing an oversized glug of my smoothie, I nodded. Scattered thoughts and hasty to-do lists swirled around my brain like those afternoon leaves on the sidewalk. Jesse. Tri training. Suitcase. Cab. Briefcase. Proposals. Contracts. Laptop. Workouts. I had to remember to record the Sharks game and to tell Jesse I wouldn’t be able to stop by the aquarium store after all.

“Before you go, question for you: on the proposal we’re doing for that Noe Valley project, the client wants us to price an option for a floating overhang on the rear addition. But they don’t want to break the bank. Suggestions? Oh, and why do you have your smoothie in a death grip?”

I looked down and noticed that my fingertips were white from clutching the bottle.

“Give a call to Tim Mac,” I said, loosening my grip, “and see what it might cost to add a gable or shed dormer over the doors. Also, ask the client whether it’s already been framed. If not, we could consider cantilevering the floor joist.”

“I take it back,” Frank said while jotting down my instructions on a Post-It. “You shouldn’t go. This place won’t hold together without you, even for a day or two.” He was attempting sarcasm but we knew each other well enough that I could detect the thread of truth. Curtis Construction’s stability — our own future security — rested on the success of this high-profile renovation.

“You know Margot is, like, the second most important person in my life.” As I said the words, a heated dread rose through my body. Maybe I’d met my match. Perhaps I would fail Margot for the first time in twenty-five years.

Frank lowered his chin and raised his eyebrows dramatically at me.

“You’re number three, don’t worry,” I added. “Really, I’d do anything to help her.”

“Of course you would.” He balled up his sandwich wrapper and swished it into the trash can half-way across the trailer.

“The question is,” I said, partly to Frank but mostly to myself, “how am I going to be any help to a woman with a baby?”

The automatic doors parted and I blinked rapidly while crossing the threshold between the stale JFK airport air and the stinging early morning New York breeze. The chill was distinctly East Coast, harsher and more demanding than gentle California winds. I clutched my scarf closer around my neck with my left hand as I wheeled my carry-on behind me with my right.

It wasn’t yet six in the morning. On a normal Friday back home in San Francisco, I’d barely be awake at this hour. Jesse and I had recently taken to sleepily walking three blocks to the Cole Valley Peet’s for green tea (thought to be good for muscle recovery) immediately upon waking around six-thirty and then doing ten minutes of stretching in our living room before getting ready for work. I wondered if he’d continue the routine in my absence. In so many aspects of our lives, we were a pair.

Minutes after Jean’s frantic call and lining up my flight, I’d left the Curtis Construction trailer and headed out to my car, which is what I always did whenever I needed to make a private call. Parked along McAllister in the shadow of the Painted Ladies, my Acura was like a cocoon amidst the bustle and undeniably seedy side of Alamo Square. My car was littered with indoor cycling shoes, towels and half-filled reusable water bottles, all evidence of the latest triathlon that Jesse and I were training for. Set for January, the race included a mile-and-a-half swim from Alcatraz to Aquatic Park (our first open water swim), as well as a seven-mile bike ride along the Embarcadero, and a four-mile run that included an out-and-back stretch over the Golden Gate Bridge. I dreaded telling Jesse about missing the weekend’s training.

The late October afternoon sun beat right down onto the driver’s seat so I huddled in the back, scooting aside the canvas bag containing my emergency skirt and pumps, which I maintained for those times when I needed to look decidedly like a professional general contractor. Even more than a decade into the new millennium, I still didn’t look like a typical GC, considering I was a woman. But when formal client meetings required, I could tame my long curly brown hair into a low bun, throw on a navy skirt and do my best to fit into the still woefully male-dominated construction world. A gay man and a woman, Frank and I were an unlikely duo in the field. But in a way, our unusual demographic disarmed potential clients and somehow worked to our advantage. Together we worked tirelessly to prove to each client that they’d made the right selection.

As I dialed Jesse’s cell, a topless double-decker bus drove by. Tourists peered down curiously at me in my car as if to say, “there’s a native,” like I was an elephant in the wild.

“Hiya,” Jesse answered briskly.

“Hey.”

“What’s up?”

We knew each other so completely that I could tell simply by the almost imperceptible clip in his tone that I’d caught him in the midst of what he called his “creative flow.” It was just as well. I’d get to the point and then sign off quickly.

“I have to go to New York tonight.” It was such an unlikely sentence for me to utter. We had no family back East and my job never required travel, let alone spur-of-the-moment, cross-country trips.

“You have —. What?”

“I know. Weird. But Jean, Margot’s mom, called me. Margot’s really in trouble.” I could hear myself talking double-time and worked to slow down.

“God, what happened?”

I relayed Jean’s report of Margot’s postpartum depression and how Jean’s own illness prevented her from caring for her daughter and infant granddaughter. Telling Jesse, I felt strangely detached, saying the words while at the same time scribbling a list of items I didn’t want to forget to pack. The sports bra hanging to dry in the garage near the washer. Three or four back issues of
Time
magazine that had piled up during the last few weeks.

“Ouch,” he said. “But what, exactly, are you supposed to do?”

While fair, given my lifelong indifference to babies and children, the question still stung.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to smooth any defensiveness out of my tone. “I guess the first thing I’ll do is assess the situation. Then maybe find her a shrink? Help hire a nanny?”

Jesse’s question reignited my own doubts about how I was going to help Margot. But Curtis Construction wasn’t San Francisco’s up-and-coming restoration company for nothing, I told myself. I could manage the shit out of a complicated, time-sensitive historical renovation for uptight and stingy clients with impossibly high standards. I assumed I could apply those skills to Margot’s situation.

“The big training is this weekend.”

Running races and doing triathlons had become one of our primary forms of togetherness. Since we started our racing journey four years ago with the twelve-kilometer Bridge to Bridge fun run, not only had Jesse’s cholesterol gone down, but working out together had reinvigorated our nine-year marriage, which had grown a teeny bit predictable and even a bit boring. So we clung to training, signing up for a new race immediately after crossing the last finish line. Missing workouts only in cases of stomach flus had become a point of pride for us. This weekend’s practice swim — in the chilly Bay waters — would be our training group’s first one outside of the pool.

“I know,” I said. “I’ll bring a suit and find a local Y or something.”

A siren wailed as an ambulance screeched across Scott Street. I inhaled, but my belly barely moved, my breaths shortening. Jesse liked Margot and all of my Egan Academy friends, but he’d never truly understood my unmitigated devotion to them. So far, I’d never been forced to choose between him and them.

“I know it’s not exactly the same,” I continued, suddenly feeling the unmistakable abdominal twists and twinges of an oncoming period. It would undoubtedly arrive within a few hours, probably right as I was boarding the plane. I spun my head around looking for that slip of paper where I’d started my packing list. I added
tampons
in all caps. “I’ll try to get in a double run — or take a cold shower to simulate the Bay — or something. It won’t set me back.”

Truth be told, I was probably more anal than he was about maintaining the proscribed training program, not unlike how I insisted our workers stick precisely to the construction schedules I spent hours plotting out. I opened the car door, letting the truck and hammer sounds from our nearby project crowd out my feelings and signal to Jesse that I needed to go, letting the machines reinforce my personal message. I leaned against the car, my eyes cast downward toward the concrete.

“How about work? Isn’t this like your biggest project ever? Can you even be out of pocket tomorrow?”

The veins in my forehead began to pulsate. I was definitely getting my period.
Christ
.

“Frank’ll handle it. You know, my work husband.” I tossed out the tired joke in a weak effort to lighten the mood. Jesse didn’t respond.

“You charged the plane tickets?”

“Um, yeah. On the B of A card,” I said briskly, hoping to deflect the next logical question: how much they cost. Jesse and I lived comfortably, for sure. But our budget didn’t usually include spur-of-the-moment plane tickets. “You’re going to training tonight, right?” I added, trying to shift the discussion from finances to the scheduled five-mile group run through Golden Gate Park.

“Uh huh.” I could hear clicks of a computer mouse in the background.

“So I probably won’t get to see you before I have to head out. I’ve got to leave for the airport around eight.” I remembered then that my first Spanish class was Monday evening. It’d be days before I’d get to spend any real time with Jesse.

As if reading my thoughts, he sighed ever so slightly. “You’re a good friend, Stevens.”

I loved when Jesse called me by my last name, which I’d kept even after we got married. “You got this, Stevens!” he’d holler during those last excruciating minutes of long runs. At his comment then, I warmed with an inexplicable pride. Being a good friend — particularly to the Egan crew — was as critical to my self-worth as being a reliable and efficient general contractor. Leaning against my car, I placed the packing list on my thigh and scribbled “Call Sarah.” Blood throbbed through my brain as I lifted my head — the dreaded period headache was upon me. I also added ibuprofen to the list.

“Thanks,” I croaked and we hung up.

I walked back to the trailer and my brain crowded with more lists of things I had to do to get ready for the unexpected cross-country journey, everything I’d miss over the weekend. All of that collided with emerging questions of what, exactly, I’d find when I arrived in Manhattan. How bad could it really be with Margot, I wondered. Maybe Jean was overreacting. After all, she was always hyper-attentive to her only child, so unlike my own parents, who’d unceremoniously handed over most parenting duties to an employee. My parents were kind-hearted, but my whole life they’d kept a mile or two between us. They’d have no idea whom to call in a crisis, other than Jesse. They loved me, but were removed from the nitty gritty details of my life, like who my friends were. I placed my hand on the trailer’s door knob and thought of my best friend, my spouse, my job and wondered,
at what cost, friendship
?

Outside the JFK arrivals area was a sea of grey and yellow — grey for the blustery, low-hanging fog and yellow for the cabs, for which there was a surprisingly long line at that early hour. Had Margot been in her right mind — or even known I was coming — she’d have sent a car. That’s what she’d done for all of us nearly three years ago when she treated five friends to an extravagant trip for her fortieth birthday. She’d planned it out impeccably: we spent one luxurious night at the Essex House in Manhattan before heading northeast for four nights to a five-star hotel in Iceland, of all places. Margot paid for everything — including everyone’s plane tickets — which she could easily afford after spending nearly twenty years earning big bucks on Wall Street. Her artificial insemination by sperm donor was scheduled for the week after our return from Iceland so the birthday trip was also the last hurrah with her best friends before she was “saddled with a runt,” as she put it. The disparaging reference belied her intense passion for becoming a mom, which ended up taking several more inseminations than expected. Fortunately for Margot, she could afford to keep going until it worked.

In Iceland, Margot and I drank Bloody Marys while the rest of the girls had wine. It was our tradition. We drank Bloody Marys in high school when the prissy girls sipped sugary wine coolers and after college when everyone else had moved onto cosmos. I’ve never once had a Bloody Mary without Margot next to me. On that trip, we spent our days around a pool — yes, Margot found a luxury hotel in Iceland with a pool, complete with heating lamps encircling cabanas — reading aloud everything from poetry to beauty articles in
Allure
. We howled as we recalled our most outrageous Egan Academy moments, the most notable involving my urine and evil Ms. Green’s favorite coffee mug.