The Saving Graces (23 page)

   But the long night was only beginning. Before we fell asleep in each other's arms, Kirby had managed to cure me of morbidity, at least for a while. He's a man of many varied and surprising talents.
I -do not believe sex, the act of love, transforms people. Emma would argue, but the fact is, I am not a romantic. Having said-that, I have to admit I felt different this morning. I lay very still, and presently it came to me what was missing.
Dread.
The colorless sunrise seeped in around the edges of the curtain, and by its grainy light 1 studied the lines on my palm. According to this one, which all but winds around the base of my thumb, I will live to be about a hundred and ten. I don't take that lightly, and yet it occurs to me that it doesn't really matter. Yesterday's revelations continue. Ultimately, in the very grand scheme of things, it's irrelevant whether my life lasts fifty more years, or five. Or two. The point is to live it, not wait through it. And I'm alive now-I can pick flowers, pet the dog, eat cinnamon toast. How foolish I would be to let my mortality, which has been there all along, since the second of my birth, spoil my love of these things. So I won't. I'll have to remind myself constantly, but starting now, I intend to live until I die.
I woke Kirby up to tell him so. He went from sleep to full wakefulness in two blinks of his eyes. His smile was blinding. "Thank you," I said, instead of telling him about my epiphany.
"For?" "The gift you gave me." "Gift." I could tell he was thinking I meant the sex. It's actually rather refreshing when Kirby acts like a typical man. "You're under a delusion," he said gruffly, running his tongue over his teeth. His hairy forearm lay dark and startling across the virginal pink of the blanket.
"I didn't give you anything, Isabel, I took. For me." "You ruthless cad." His lips curved. "Just don't turn it around. Don't make it me being selfless and giving," he advised, growing serious. He reached for me, cupping my face in his hands and stroking his thumb along the skimpy hair at my temple. He's very romantic. -To me, everything he does is just right.
"How lucky I am," I realized all at once, kissing him all over his surprised face. Starting now, I remembered. No more waiting, nothing but living from here on. "Take advantage of me again," I suggested. A fine beginning.

   Lee.

   I was dozing when Henry answered the phone in the hall on the third ring. I heard him say, "Hey, Em," in a glad voice, and start clumping up the stairs. "Yeah, she's still in bed. Well, she's still sore. Yeah. A day or two, they say. Yesterday. No, everything went just fine." He stopped in the bedroom doorway. "Hold on, I'll see." He put his hand over the receiver. "You awake? Want to talk to Emma?" I stared at him coldly. "Everything went fine?" His face closed up; he didn't look so damned happy anymore. "Here she is," he said into the phone. "She'll tell you all about it." I took the telephone from him and covered up the mouthpiece. "Why did you tell her everything went fine?" "I meant," he said, "there weren't any complications." He had the nerve to sound exasperated.
"You're glad, aren't you? Why don't you admit it?" "What?" "It's not your fault anymore." "Lee, you're-" He took a deep breath, made a big deal of reining in his temper. "You're nuts," he said quietly, and went out of the room.
I blotted my eyes with a new tissue and said hello into the phone.
"Hi! How was it, how are you feeling?" Oh, knock it off, I thought. What was she trying to sound like, a nurse? "I feel okay. Tired." "Yeah? Not in any pain?" "Not anymore." "What did they do to you?" - "They did an HSG, a hysterosalpingogram, and later they did a laparoscopy." "Wow. Were you asleep?" "For the laparoscopy. Not the HSG." "Did it hurt?" "Yes." "Oh, Lee. Was Henry with you?" "He had to work. He picked me up afterward and brought me home." - - Pause. My flat voice finally got through to her. She said hesitantly, "Is it bad news? What did they find?" "I've got SiN. That's pretty funny, isn't it? I thought you'd appreciate it. Salpingitis isthmica nodosa." "What does it mean?" "It means a tubal blockage. It means that little things like eggs and sperm and embryos can't get through." "Oh, no. Oh, Lee. Can they fix it?" "Sometimes. Not in my case, though. Because I've got bipolar disease-damage to the tube at both ends, not just one." - "Slit."

   "Yes." -"But there must be something they can do. Nowadays-" - "All that's left is in vitro." "That's like a test tube-" "They take an egg from the ovary, fertilize it with sperm in a lab environment, an embryo forms, and they put it in the uterus." "I see. So-that'Il work?" - "Possibly. The chances increase if they use donor sperm." "Donor sperm. You mean-not Henry's?" "Correct." "Do you-would that be-" "At this point, I really couldn't care less." "Aha. And Henry's okay with that, too?" I was tired of answering questions. "This is getting a little personal," I said.
She took a quick breath. "Hey, sorry, excuse me, I just-I shouldn't have asked, it's just that we've usually-Well, anyway, sorry." "Okay." "So. In vitro next. Well, I'm sure that'll work. In fact, they probably should've started with it, but hindsight's twenty-twenty and all that." I waited.
"Well, um, you sound tired, so I guess I'll let you go. I'll tell Rudy how you're doing. She'll probably call you." "Fine." *** course? I can't believe it. I was sure Curtis would stop her, or else she'd chicken out. I just think it's great. Our Rudy, flexing her muscles." "Yes, it's great." "Have you talked to Isabel?" "Last night. Briefly." "How did she sound?" "Fine. She was sorry about what they found. The tubal blockage." "But how was she? Did she sound okay?" "She sounded fine, she sounded peachy. I have to get off the phone." "Lee? Honey, I'm sorry, I know this is rough, but-" "No, you don't, you don't know anything about it. And I just hope it never happens to you, Emma, because then you won't think it's so damned trivial." "I don't think it's trivial! What do you mean? Where did that come from?" - "I have to get off the phone." "Well, get off, then." "All right." "Oh, Lee-" I hung up. I'd told her I had to get off, so I wasn't hanging up on her. Technically.
I got up and got dressed.
Henry was stirring a big pot on the stove. He turned around when he heard me. "You're up." He looked surprised, although not particularly pleased. "You sure you should be out of bed? They said-" "A day or two and its been a day I feel fine I'm going over to Isabel's." "Isabel's? But I'm making dinner-it's seven o'clock." "I know what time it is. I'm not hungry. Especially for chili." It's all he knows how to make, but still, how thoughtless. Wouldn't you think anyone would know that chili isn't the dish you offer someone who's convalescing from surgery?
But everything about him annoyed me, his flannel shirt, the wooden spoon he was dripping sauce on the floor with, his new haircut that made him look like a girl. That's what we'd fought about last week. "You're too old for long hair," I'd told him-so he'd gone out and gotten it cut without consulting me. He didn't like it when I said, "Now you look like Prince Valiant. If you're going to get your hair cut, do it right, try to look like a normal man for a change." We didn't speak again for two days.
"All right," I said to him now, "I'm going." "When will you be back?" I put on my jacket gingerly; if I stretched too quickly, something pulled in my abdomen. "I don't know." "Well, call before you leave," he said, going back to stirring.
"Why?" "So I'll know." "Know what?" He looked around in irritation. "That you're leaving." "What difference does it make?" He turned away, angry. Good.
"If I get carjacked, what are you going to do about it? If somebody mugs me in Adams-Morgan, how does my calling you before I leave-" "Don't, then." He banged the spoon on the stove. "Don't call, who cares?" He walked out of the kitchen into the TV room.
My stomach hurt. I followed him, seething.
"You're glad, aren't you?" "Shit." He slammed the remote control on the coffee table.
"It's not your precious sperm anymore, it's me." "You're losing your mind." -"No, I'm not. Tell me you're not secretly relieved- you can't!" "Lee, it's both of us." "Yes, and you're glad. Somebody to share the blame with." - "The blame?" He swore, which he knows I hate. "Why does anybody have to be to blame? It just happened, it's nobody's fault-" "Oh, you'd like that." He stuck his fingers in his hair, messing up his pageboy cut. "What the hell does that mean!" I had no idea. "It doesn't mean anything." I started to cry.
He didn't move, didn't come over to comfort me.
We stood on opposite sides of the room and stared at each other.
"I'm going to Isabel's," I told him, and left.

   Kirby answered the door. He carried a napkin in his hand, and he had to swallow before he said, "Come in." "Oh, no. You're eating-I'm sorry, I thought you'd be-" "Lee?" Isabel called. Kirby widened the door, and I saw her in the little nook off the kitchen she calls the dining room. "Come on in, we were just finishing." "Come," Kirby seconded, gesturing. Even Grace plodded over to greet me.
I went in.
The apartment looked like a bower-a church. Every table, every shelf on the bookcase held a vase or a bowl of flowers, dahlias, petunias, cosmos, asters. Classical music played softly on the stereo, and the air smelled exotic, a combination of incense and something gingery. Chinese food? The last rays of the sun were streaming through a stained glass plaque of an angel in the living room window, and the only other light came from candles-they were everywhere, like the flowers.
"What is it?" I asked stupidly. Kirby was trying to get me to take off my jacket. "What's happening?" - "What do you mean? Just dinner, and we're done." Gripping the edge of the table for support, Isabel pushed back her chair and stood up. She reached behind for something, standing at an awkward, half-bent angle, opening and closing her hand until she found it. A cane.
"I've interrupted something. Don't get up, you're having a special evening, I can-" "No, no." She kept coming, taking slow but normal steps. She reached the natural light in the living room, and I saw how pale she was. Her unlined face was beautifully gaunt, her dark-circled eyes too big, her cheekbones too sharp. The new drug-it had to be that. Making her sick again. The doctor took her off the old drugs and put her on Taxol. She smiled at me, trying to put me at ease. Kirby was still hovering. I burst into tears, - I felt two pairs of hands on me, patting, soothing. I looked up to see Isabel send Kirby a message with her eyes. He said, "Well, I think I'll just," arid then he headed for the bedroom, mumbling the rest.
"Oh, no," I wailed, "now look, I've banished him, he's-" "Shh, -slush. He lives here, he's just going to his room, you didn't banish him. Have you eaten?" "He lives here?" "Well, virtually." She was leading me back to the dining area, one hand through my arm, the other on her cane. A wooden cane with a brass handle. "Sit. Look at all this food we have left." "I'm not hungry. Good Lord, Isabel, what is that?" "This? Miso soup. And tofu and brown rice. Would you like some plum juice?" "No, thank you." 'We were trying out a new cookbook. I'll bet you didn't know that macrobiotic food likes to be stirred counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, but clockwise in the southern." "It likes to be?" "I can't wait to tell Emma. Are we sitting down, or would you rather talk in the living room?" "Living room." And by the time we were settled on the sofa, Isabel with a glass of plum juice and me with Grace -grinning at my feet, I had pulled myself together, no more snuffling and weeping. "Sorry," I said, blowing my nose for the last time. "This is all you need. I should've called first, but I just-" "It's all right." "I sort of escaped. From myself as much as the house. Emma called tonight and I hung up on her." "You what?" "I know, it's crazy. I'll call her tomorrow, try to apologize. She didn't do anything, it's me, I'm not myself anymore. And Henry-oh God, we're fighting about the stupidest things. Isabel," I interrupted myself, "is this how you live all the time?" I gestured to the flowers, the candles. "It's beautiful." 'The sudden question came to me-How could Isabel die? She had that pretty rug she loved, she had these pillows, those wildflower lifhographs on the wall. The poignancy of all her things, her belongings, somehow struck me as proof that she couldn't leave, she had to stay. Otherwise, it would be too cruel.
She smiled. "Yes, it's deliberate. Kirby's idea. A place for healing, he says. Now, tell me about the surgery." "It was awful. You have to lie under this huge X-ray machine with your feet in stirrups. They thread a catheter through your cervix into your uterus. They gave me Advil and told me it wouldn't hurt, but it was absolutely excruciating. My muscles went into spasm." "Oh, my Lord." She squeezed my hand, wincing.
"They send a dye in through the catheter. If there's no obstruction, it goes to the end of the fallopian tubes, but if there's a block it stops. Mine stopped, so they knew I had to have the laparoscopy. To see how bad it was." "And?" "Bad. It can't be fixed, surgery's not possible. I can't have a child except by in vitro fertilization, and the chances of that working at my age are about twelve percent, even with donor sperm. Plus, every time you do it, it costs a fortune." "How much?" "About eleven thousand dollars." Isabel's mouth dropped open. "Henry's-he can't even talk about it. So we're barely speaking." She shook her head in sympathy. "What do you think you'll do?" "In vitro." Isabel sat back. She started to say something, then didn't.
"Well, it's my money, not his." "Yes, but it seems like so much money." "What difference does it make? If I had a terrible..." "If you had a terrible disease, what?" she said when I stopped. I wasn't saying anything right tonight.
"I just mean, if I needed an operation or something to save my life, he wouldn't mind spending the money for that." "No," "Well, it's the same thing." "Is it?" "It is for me." Isabel made a loose fist and pressed it to her lips thoughtfully. Her soft eyes regarded me for so long, I leaned over to pet the dog. "What about adoption, Lee?" "No, I've told you." "I know, but-" "We're not considering it." "I see." I sat up and faced her. "The in vitro can work, Isabel," I said, letting my excitement show. "Twelve percent-that's not very good, but each time you do it it's twelve percent, so it adds up. That's how I'm looking at it. I feel hopeful, I really do. I just wish we'd started with this, I wish we hadn't wasted so much time." "Lee . .
"What?" She smiled, and I realized I had snapped at her. "I don't have any advice," she assured me, "don't worry." "I don't mind advice," I said contritely.
"It's just that I'd hate to see you hurt again. That's all." It's happening again, the hope revving up. Every time- every month-" I pressed my hands over my eyes. "I'm so afraid it won't work, and then I think it will-a miracle. Then it doesn't, and I'm scared again. I'm so tired, if I could just have some rest-" "Why don't you-" "There's no time, I've already let too many years slip away. That's what kills me, or one thing. I've always, always been in control of my life, every part of it, and now the most important part is out of my control, and I'm stuck, I can't move, and I can't stand this uncertainty anymore." Isabel sighed. She sat back slowly, pulling a pillow against the small of her back. Her fragility disturbed me, but it was the Taxol, I was sure. So much of chemotherapy is worse than the disease it's supposed to cure.
"Lee," she said wearily. "No advice, just a question.
-Something for you to think about. Okay?" "Of course. Go ahead." I leaned over again to pet Grace.
"Is having a child the most important thing in your life? More important than Henry?" - My throat closed; I couldn't answer.
"Ask yourself if the need to have your own genetic, biological child outweighs every other need in your life, including your marriage. I know you love Henry, there's no question of that. But if your answer is yes, you may lose him. Why did you marry him?" she asked kindly. "There's no right or wrong-if it was to have a child of your very own, no one else's, well, that's the answer. But you may not be able to keep your husband. Are you crying?" "I can't help it." I felt her move closer. She put her arm around me. "I know. All that pain-most of it comes from trying to avoid it. The tyranny of wanting things. Poor Lee, you want this so badly." -"What is that, Buddhism?" She hugged me. "Yes, as a matter of fact. Sorry." "I don't mind it. Don't mix me up with Emma." She laughed. I blew my nose. "I know I'm. . . what's the word? Not obsessed." Isabel raised her eyebrows.
"I'm not. I'm . . . consumed, that's it. I know I'm consumed by our infertility, and that's not fair to Henry.
We must've had problems before now, but I can't even remember what they were. He says I blame everything that's wrong between us, everything that's wrong with my whole life, on the fact that we can't have children. It's true. I know-I know I'm driving him away, but-" Isabel leaned against me while 1 cried some more, What finally made me stop, once and for all, was realizing how badly I wanted to lay my head down in her lap and let her hold me. In fact, I almost did it. My only excuse is that it was the lowest point on one of the most miserable nights of my life, and that Isabel had always been there for me, as caring and tenderhearted as a mother.
But now it was different. She was going to recover eventually, I was sure of that, but for the time being her problems made mine look embarrassingly small. I sat up straight. "I feel much better. Thanks for listening to all that. Let's go in the kitchen, I'll do the dishes while you tell me how you're doing." She protested, but I won by ignoring her. "That's new," I said casually as we stood up.
"This? Kirby got it for me." She smiled, running her fingers over the curved brass head of the cane, which was shaped like-something; a horse? "The dragon," she said. "It's a symbol of hope." "Oh." Did that mean she didn't need it? Or she needed it for luck, but not to walk? I was afraid to ask.
She never did tell me how she was doing, not really.
She said the new drug didn't have as many side effects as the old ones, which surprised me. Because she didn't look well. Beautiful, but not well, "I'm just tired," she said, sponging crumbs off the counter into the sink. "I feel like I could sleep for a week." "How's school going?" "All right," she answered after a pause. She sounded vague.
"Really? Still taking a full course load?" She found a spot on the counter that needed scouring and didn't answer.
"Isabel?" She can't lie, She can evade, but she can't lie, "I've had to drop a few credits. It was a little too much. I'll make them up next summer." "But you're still enrolled, you haven't-" "Oh, yes," she said positively. "I'm working hard and really enjoying this semester. Some great courses. I've got a paper due tomorrow, in fact, in Society and Aging." "Oh, no. Is it finished?" "Just about. I've still-" "Why didn't you tell me? Oh, Isabel!" "What? Oh, don't be silly." She followed me into the living room, laughing. "What are you doing, running away?" "First I drive Kirby out before he's finished eating his dinner-where's-my coat, did he hang it up?" "Lee, you don't have to go." "Then I go on for half an hour about my problems and you don't get a word in, and then-" "I got a few words in." "The only good thing I did was the dishes." "Don't go, you don't have to. All I have left to do is the footnotes." I kissed her. She felt different, brittle or something, I was afraid to hug her very hard. "Tell Kirby I'm sorry." She made a face. "I'll call you tomorrow. Thanks for everything. I mean it." "Be careful driving." "Bye." "Good night, Lee." I was all the way to the elevator, in fact I'd already pressed the button, when I remembered. I hurried back to Isabel's apartment.
She opened the door. "Hi, long time no see," I joked. "Can I do one more thing?" "Sure." She stood back to let me in. "What?" "Call Henry. Tell him I'm coming home." ***