The Rest of Us: A Novel (35 page)

Rhinehart reached over and felt my stomach. “Kicking away. Like Oedipus after his father sealed up the exit. That’s from a Ted Hughes poem.” He recited, “ ‘He was a horrible fella.’ ”

“Have you thought about boys’ names at all?” I said.

“Adam.”

“Really? I was wondering if you were going to want your own name, or your father’s.”

“No, no. I don’t believe in legacy naming. It dilutes the animus’s force. And I would never saddle an American child with the name ‘Yosyp.’ Whereas Adam has this wonderful biblical resonance. Pre-fall. It suggests that God had a plan for me I didn’t foresee.”

“What about timothy?”

Rhinehart took me by the elbow as we crossed the street. “That’s a girl’s name.”

•  •  •

After dinner, we’d walk down to the coffee shop on the corner to get malteds, which I seemed to always get a craving for around eight o’clock. He steered me as if I were an old lady. “Your tummy is getting big. If it were a package, you couldn’t carry it more than a block before setting it down.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said. “With all the books you’ve been reading, didn’t you see the list of what not to say to pregnant women?”

“If we didn’t already know I would think it was two babies. I would have loved to have been the father of twins,” he said, mournfully.

“I think one will be more than enough for us.”

•  •  •

At other times, though, Rhinehart seemed preoccupied. More than once, I’d caught him staring out the window, not even hearing me when I came in. One night late in July, I discovered him in the kitchen, rocking, his hands over his face.

I flipped on the overhead fluorescents, and he looked up at the harsh light, his eyes black, the pupils still dilated.

“Are you sick?” I asked him. The back of his neck was clammy and cold.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I feel nauseous. My heart is racing. I took aspirin that had gotten wet. It was in the pocket with some coins. You don’t think that would have caused this, do you?”

“No.”

“Coins poison water. The metal releases toxins into the water.”

I went soft for him. Whenever he got anxiety he became convinced he’d ingested something laced. “I’m sure that’s not it.” His forehead was damp, and I brushed his hair back from his face. “You’re probably just feeling some fear and focusing on the physical sensation. Do you want to talk about it?”

He didn’t say anything, just slumped over in the seat, his head between his hands.

“Why don’t you come to bed then?”

Surprisingly, he allowed me to lead him back into the dark reaches of the bedroom, and got in obediently between the cool sheets. He closed his eyes, but when I turned over in the middle of the night, I saw they were open again. He was staring at the ceiling, as if he’d been looking at it for hours.

The next morning he felt better and so we didn’t discuss it, but I was worried he was feeling trapped by the baby. It wasn’t easy to read Rhinehart recently, or perhaps I hadn’t been trying as hard as I had in the past. I had the upcoming show, and my own body had also become the site of so much of my attention that it was difficult, at times, to move my mind away from it.

•  •  •

Hallie had followed through on her PR idea soon after she’d voiced it, and had been steadily developing a list of corporate clients over the summer, some of which she’d already done freelance projects for. “I’m working on building a flashier clientele. Wealthy individuals. So I can coordinate the publicity for high-end events.” During her downtime, she’d been volunteering with PETA. When I met up with her in Union Square, she had just done a zoo protest. Along with two other women, she had stripped down naked, gotten body-painted as a tiger, and hunkered down in a metal dog crate by the zoo parking lot underneath a banner that read, “Wild Animals Don’t Belong in Cages.”

Her face was heated, retelling the story. “One guy dumped an entire soda through the bars. What they were really pissed about was the nudity, I think. You couldn’t see our nipples or anything, but you could see a lot. People were staring. I mean you really felt like a caged animal. That was the crazy part. During breaks I’d come out and put on a robe and just talk to people. I think I got through to some of them.”

She got out her notepad, which I’d noticed was a constant thing with her lately, and jotted something down. “I think that campaign may be more effective if we dress in animal costumes instead of going naked—so we can relate to the kids.”

“You’re good at finding the most persuasive method.” She’d gotten me to give up most meat, except for shellfish, and all commercial eggs, after grueling accounts of thousands of live chicks dumped on conveyor belts and into the trash. When she’d first started volunteering, about a month ago, every other story out of her mouth was an animal torture story. On a bright summer day, crossing the park, I was listening to accounts of terrified beagles being shipped to laboratories. “I can’t,” I finally said. “I can’t. Just tell me what to buy or boycott, and I’ll do that. I’ll believe you.”

She regarded it as her own personal accomplishment that she’d converted me.

“You know I think this is the work you’re really suited for,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s nonprofit. I’m not crazy about the office culture—it’s so dowdy. And they don’t pay jack. I like to have my own money. I don’t want Adán picking up the tab for everything.”

He’d moved back to Spain and was staying at his family’s house temporarily. I didn’t know which house that was, probably the one in Madrid, but still I envisioned him in the place he’d wanted me to visit, Collbató as he’d described it, the red soil at the foot of the mountains, the long, weathered table under the grape arbor, his aunt who’d married the Catalonian man, serving crayfish from a big paella bowl, flies buzzing around.

“Do you think you’ll see him again?”

“I don’t know. Whenever we talk, I get all excited and then two days later I’m miserable. He says he feels the same. With separations, sometimes there’s no solution except just getting by.” She smiled at me. “And I feel good lately. Better than I ever have, Terry. I mean, there are times when I get depressed, but I feel different. It’s hard to explain, it feels so internal.”

“I can see it,” I said. “I can tell.”

•  •  •

That night, as we were getting into bed, I repeated what Hallie had said about Adán to Rhinehart, who’d been out to dinner with his stepdaughters, drinking port wine, most likely—his special occasion drink. They’d recently reunited. Evidently they’d been upset with him after he and Laura split, which I hadn’t known.

He said, “
Tout passe et s’efface dans l’espace sans trace.
It loses the assonance in English, but loosely translated it means ‘everything fades eventually without leaving a trace.’ It’s how I felt tonight, being out with the girls. How much of their lives I get a snippet of, meant to represent the whole. In fact, I think it actually subtracts from what I know of them.”

I was on my side, facing him, the only position that was comfortable anymore. Lying on my back, I felt as if my insides were being crushed. “Can you spend more time with them?”

“I would like to, but it’s difficult. It’s not just the distance. They satellite around a different star—they have husbands. They have Laura. I met them as independent adults, living away from home, and so the bond between us isn’t as strong as I’d like.”

“Sometimes I think the only real family unit is the one you have when you’re a child. The one the baby will have,” I told Rhinehart, who added, “The home we will make for little timothy.”

The unnamed baby, this little soul, probably the same size as my soul, where did it come from? I was throwing these questions upward to circulate around us. Was the soul newly minted for every life? Or was it slightly worn, a crumpled dollar having made a series of mysterious rounds, impossible to know where it had been. Arriving with a history of lives in a dossier. Having loved others before us. Having already lived and lied and done wrong many times over?

Rhinehart thought this was a good thing. “When the body is born the soul gets another chance to make everything right, to settle any harm caused by its prior actions. Some religions believe that in each life we are given a set of challenges specific to the individual soul’s path to God.”

“Do you think we knew this child in its past life?”

“Probably. I always believed you and I knew each other before.”

I assumed he meant we were married, or perhaps long-lost lovers who had missed the opportunity to marry, but instead, he said he thought I might have been his brother.

“Your brother!” I said.

“Don’t laugh, Tatie. I’m an only child. It’s no accident that you’re an only child, too. The roles we take in each life are just helpful guises.”

“An older or younger brother?”

“Around the same age. Maybe even a twin.”

“Really!” I was flattered.

He laid his palm on my belly. “And who do you think we were?”

“I’m not sure I believe in reincarnation.”

“Ah, the good Presbyterian. I’ve always found reincarnation a
greatly reassuring philosophy, although I struggle with the idea of karma. It feels strangely unfair.”

“But what you feel like to me sometimes is my mother. It’s the emotional attachment, I think, the caring. And also probably this feeling of distance. That no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to be close enough. There is an absence embedded in our relationship.”

“I think that’s true of most people’s relationships. It’s the distance between what we feel and the reality of another person, who is a collection of his or her own separate feelings and desires.”

“I miss her. How can I miss someone I never knew? Is that stupid?”

“You
did
know her. The baby that was you knew her.”

“I feel cheated.” Tears ran over my nose onto the pillow. “I’m most worried that because I never had a role model, I won’t know how to be a good mother.”

With his palm he wiped my face. “I’m in the same boat, but I don’t think it matters. It’s something you do instinctively.”

“Explain reincarnation to me.” I’d had a flash of an idea that the baby could be my mother, and we could have a chance to know each other again.

“Some Buddhist traditions use the metaphor of a tree to describe the soul. Just because it has no leaves and isn’t blooming at that moment, doesn’t mean it lacks the potential to bloom. Death is just a dormancy period, as a tree experiences in winter. The flowers are still inside, waiting for the right conditions, like spring, rebirth, to manifest themselves.”

I pictured the cherry trees in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “And how long does it take before someone gets reincarnated?”

“There are several different theories on this, but I believe it depends on what type of life you’ve had. How much of a rest you need and how enlightened you are. Some people need less time. When they went looking for the next Dalai Lama, they checked for babies that were born on the day he died.”

I wondered how much time my mother would need. Would she
have needed more than thirty years, or would she have lived a life in between, a short life, and then come back into this one.

“What do you think you’ll be in your next life?” I asked Rhinehart.

“A girl, probably, and you?”

“I don’t know, but I’d like to try something different. See what it’s like to live inside a man’s body.”

“Maybe you’ll be my father, then.”

I laughed. “Maybe. I just hope we know each other.”

“I’m sure we will,” he said. “I don’t think we’re done with each other yet.”

•  •  •

My opening was on a Thursday. I walked alongside Rhinehart in a long dress and flats. I’d seen old ladies on the Upper East Side in trendier shoes, but my ankles were swollen, and already I was hobbled by nerves. Rhinehart hailed a cab, and then, either to calm me, or just because it occurred to him, began recounting a story about a boyhood blueberrying trip to Maine, during which he spent all day industriously stripping several bushes of unripe berries. He was under the impression that fruit ripened during shipping to the city. The proprietors had asked his chaperone very nicely that he not return. “I love Maine. The way the tidal flats rise up, changing from mud to lake. The water oozes from the ground, like a great underground spring.”

I’d been thinking about Laura. Clare had mentioned that she’d be there, and I felt as uncomfortable as I would seeing an old lover. She hadn’t spoken to me since that searing phone conversation months ago. But perhaps, if she was coming, it meant she had forgiven me.

In the quiet of the cab, the city glittering around us, Rhinehart asked how I was feeling.

“Excited,” I said. “Part of me just can’t believe this is actually happening. It’s exhilarating, but also sort of odd.” For so long I’ve been the one pushing my work along and now it felt as if it had built up
its own momentum and was the one pulling me. “I’m not sure I can live up to the thing I’ve created.”

“But you don’t have to. Your job is done. For this body of work, anyway. Even if you decided not to come tonight, the photographs would still be hanging there. There would still be a crowd. Wine and cheese on the tables.” He smiled. “In some ways, we’re only a vehicle for the work we do. So it gets produced and then seen.”

I took his hand. It was warm. “Thank you.”

“Tonight we’re just partygoers. And I’ve been looking forward to this party all summer. You’re going to love it.”

•  •  •

In my imagination, one of my fear-based imaginings, there was a thready, bored group, awkward silences, and my work on the walls, gaping nakedly at everyone. But the gallery was packed with a noisy, drinking crowd. There were so many people in there, you couldn’t even see the art. I scanned the faces and recognized several women from the MoMA event, my old neighbor, a few artists I did the show in midtown with, even Marty had come along with Shani, who hugged me, saying, “I am
so
proud of you. And inspired.” Marty, peering at the photographs, complimented me on my “first-rate” technique. I was soon surrounded by a congratulatory group, and the locus of a lot of heady praise.