The Saving Graces (35 page)

   Watery giggles from Emma and Rudy.

   You're the sane one, we always said. Sometimes, because of that, we forgot to be soft with you, believing you were strong and didn't need us to be so gentle. You are strong-but also tender in the center. I can't imagine the last dozen years of my life without you. You've been my friend and my daughter. My delight.

   Nobody said anything while I stopped for a minute.

   A little time has passed since you and Henry gave up trying for your own baby. Mourning time. And I'm gone-you won't mix up those two losses so readily now. You can see more clearly. Lee-good news. Did you know there's a child looking for you? I tried to tell you this before, but I didn't say it right. I've been thinking about it a lot. Emma won't want to hear how I know this, so I won't say-but I do happen to know for certain that there's a child somewhere right now who's looking for you and Henry. You have to try to find him. (Or her; even I don't know this detail, Emma.) And when you do- and you will-you'll have to love him with your whole heart. And you will.
I'm so happy for you. This is a deep, deep comfort to me, knowing this about you. And your baby-.ah, what a wonderful mother he'll have. Lucky, lucky baby.
There's so much more I could say. My beloved Graces. Lee, Rudy, Emma, the friends of my heart. Then again, there's really nothing else to say. I feel so close to you. I've thought of something you can do for me. In fact, I insist on it; I'll brook no argument. You have to find a transient member who'll stay. A nontransient; a permanent. Really, you have to try, no halfhearted measures, no false welcomes or disingenuous goodwill. Two new members would be even better. Our group can't be allowed to fade away-you know that. Do this for me. Please. Because it's not really for me, it's for you. I wish it for you.
Thank you for all you've given to me. Lee, Emma, Rudy, I love you. Thank you for staying with me to the end. Do you know what I regret? That I won't be there when what's happening to me happens to each of you. To give back a little of the love and solace and sweetness you've given me.
But then again-Emma, you knew this was coming-maybe I will be. Yes, I think I will. In fact, now that I've thought of it, I'm counting on it. Just not, please Cod, anytime soon.
All my love,

   Isabel

    Emma.

   I made Rudy and Lee go outside on the deck when I called- Mick. Well, the only phone is in the kitchen, and they'd have been able to hear me. It wasn't raining anymore. Just a little damp. They were fine.
But guess what, the line was busy. Who was he talking to? Any number of loathsome possibilities crossed my mind.
"The line's busy, you can come back." They returned, and together we set the table and finished making the chowder.
"Okay, go out now, I'm calling him again. Here," I said, sensing mutiny, shoving a bag of pretzels at Rudy. "Eat these if you get hungry." They left, muttering snide things, and I dialed Mick's number again.
"Hello?" From now on, I will associate the great emotions, fear, dread, heart-stopping relief, with the smell of cooking clams.
"Mick? This-" "Emma?" "Yes. Hi. Urn . . . hi. I was just talking to Lee, and..." "Are you at home?" "No, I'm at Hatteras." "Did you go down today?" "Yesterday. We got here yesterday." He laughed, the oddest sound. "That explains it." "What?" "I called you all night last night. I was sure you had a date. One of your ubiquitous men." My legs started to tremble. I slid to the floor slowly, carrying the phone down with me. "One of my ubiquitous men?" Euphoria. I was aware of my jaw, my throat; my lips felt swollen; I didn't sound like myself. "I called you just now," I said, "but the line was busy. I figured it was your new girlfriend." He laughed again. Giddy. "No, that was Jay." "Oh." That sobered me up. "Where is he?" "With his mother. Sally's staying with her parents in Wilmington. While she looks for a place. For her and Jay." "Oh. So you..." "We've separated. As of about ten days ago. I have a lot to tell you." He paused, then blurted out, "Emma, why the hell are you so far away?" "I know! Oh, Mick." And then I had to ask, "Why did you wait ten whole days to call me?" "Well, for One thing, I wasn't sure it would make any difference." "How could you think that?" "Because the last time we spoke, you were very clear. About us. Don't you remember?" "Of course I remember." That excruciating interval on the front porch. "But that's because you didn't give me any hope. You didn't see anything changing." "I know. It happened all of a sudden. The other reason is because I wasn't sure she'd really go. Stay gone. Now I'm sure, but if she had come back, it would've been bad. For you." "Why?" I asked fearfully.
"I wouldn't have stayed, that's not what I mean."

   "If she'd come back, I'd have left, Emma. Because it's really over."

   "But I didn't want you in the middle of that, if it happened. That's why I didn't call you." "Oh." That was a good reason. It made me grin like a hyena and quiefly bang my fist on the floor. "How did it happen? If you want to tell me. I know you've always-" "I want to tell you. I want to see you. What if I drove down there tonight?" Now I was really coming undone. "Well, you could, but I'll be home tomorrow." "Tomorrow. I don't know. That's a long time." "I know." "I could meet you in Richmond," he said, and we laughed like teenagers. "Or Norfolk." "I guess that wouldn't make much sense." "Guess not." "Fredericksburg, though More giggling. "Oh, Mick. This is. . just what I've always wanted. To say stupid things to you long-distance.
"What?" "Good. This is good." "Yes." Long, smiling pause.
"What are you doing?" he asked. "Where is everybody?" "I'm sitting on the kitchen floor. Rudy and Lee are out on the deck-I banished them. They're fine, it stopped raining. Where are you?" "I'm in the kitchen, too. You've never been in my house before." "No. Is it nice?" "Come and see." "I will." I could not, simply could not, stop grinning. "So are you okay? With the separation? How's Jay?" - "He's much better than I thought he'd be. Unless I'm kidding myself. I miss him-that's the worst of it. Emma, I might move to Baltimore, try to go to the Maryland Institute. If I can get in-it's one of the best private art colleges in the country." "You'll get in. What would you do, get a master's?" "Yeah. And I'd like being closer to Jay. Sally surprised me. She's not fighting custody, she wants us both to have him." - "Thank God. That was the main thing." "So when I see you, you can rub it in about how I should've done this years ago. Except that it couldn't have happened any sooner. I don't think." "Not one word. I'll be a model of self-restraint." I could hear him smiling, feel it in the pauses.
"So," he said. "What do you think about Baltimore?" "I think it's great. It's only an hour's drive. We'll work everything out." "That's what I was hoping. You know, it's..." "What." "Hard to switch over from the daydream to reality." "How do you mean?" I knew, I just wanted to hear him say it.
"The things that seem to be happening now. About to happen. I've been imagining them for a long time, almost since I met you." "Have you?" "But I was afraid to hope." -"I know. Me, too." "But now. Now it seems to be working out." "It's terrifying. Because it's too good." "Or else . . .
He didn't finish, but I knew where that was heading, too. Or else it won't work. Always a possibility. Mick didn't have much of a track record for failed relationships -only one that I knew of-but I sure did. And we'd been pining for each other for a year and a half. If that's not a setup for disaster, I don't know what is.
"How come we're not even more afraid?" I wondered. "I should be paralyzed. But instead I've got this- ridiculous-faith. I feel silly even saying that. But I have it, I do. Because this isn't like anything that's ever happened before. To me. Oh, Mick, I can't say these things to you over the phone." "I know. Tomorrow." "Tomorrow. Okay. Oh, man. I feel very ... lustful. All of a sudden." "Lustful." The way he said it, surprised and glad and in agreement. Mmm.
"Lustful." It was beginning to sound onomatopoeic.
"Call me," he said, "as soon as you get home." "Don't worry." "Do you want to come here?" "I don't know." Ah, the delicious logistics. "No, you come to my house. Is that okay?" "Yes." We talked a little longer. But it wasn't very satisfying. Too much to say, and definitely too much lust. And we couldn't even talk dirty because I wasn't really alone. He told me the bare outline of how the split- with Sally had come about. She'd asked him point blank, over dinner at the Yenching Palace on Connecticut, if he loved her. He could have said yes and meant it in a charitable, faraway, technical sense; he'd done that often enough before, he said. Instead he told her the barer, harder truth. He said no.
She cried, but she didn't break down and she wasn't destroyed. He thought she might even have been relieved. "Or else I'm kidding myself," he said again. Either way, it was her idea to go back to Delaware. Jay would be with her more than with him at the beginning, and he was almost reconciled to it. "He loves his grandparents, and they're great with him. I think he'll be all right. I'll see him all the time. I'm rationalizing, I know-" "No, but it's true, you will see him." "But it won't be the same." "No, it won't. But after a while, maybe it'll be better." Had I really said that? I wanted to get up and look in a mirror, see if my appearance had changed, too.
"Okay," I said eventually. "I guess I should go. They probably want to eat. Lee and Rudy."- I could see their outlines through the screen, lying in the deck chaises, Rudy's cigarette tip a waving red dot in the dark.
"Okay," Mick said. Halfhearted.
Such a juvenile pleasure. It took us ten more minutes to hang up. This is how it's going to be, I thought. Maybe it won't work (but I think it will), but in the meantime we get all this happiness.
"I love you," I whispered. Very brave. Isabel, are you listening?
He said it back, and added my name. I can't get enough of that, Mick saying "Emma." Oh, Jeez. Pretty soon I'll be scribbling his name in my geography book.
"See you tomorrow," I said. "Good night, Emma." "Night." "See you tomorrow." "Yeah. Or you could call me later."

    Startled silence, then we laughed at the simplicity of the solution. It made saying good-bye so much easier.

   "Well?" "Well?" "We talked." I drifted over to the railing and hunched over it, too scattered and dreamy and romantic to sit.
Rudy got up and came to stand beside me. "You talked?" "We heard that." Lee got up and moved to my other side.
"Right there," I said, leaning over farther. "Well, you can't see from here; farther in." "What?" "We kissed for the first time." Rudy sighed. Lee gasped. "That weekend?" "Yep." "I want to hear all about this, every single detail." "Okay." No problem. I had never felt more generous.
"But first, are you going after him?" "Am I going after him?" "Isn't that what Isabel said you should do?" "I guess she did." "So? Are you?" I smiled. Wasn't it written all over my face? Lee can be so literal. "Are you going to adopt a child?" I countered.
"Oh, Em." She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed. "It's looking for me," she whispered, staring up at the sky. The clouds had blown away; the stars were out and winking.
"I take it that's a yes?" She nodded slowly, dreamy-eyed. "Why did I wait so long?" Rudy and I exchanged a look. "Well," I said, "why did you?" "It's-I don't know. Now it's obvious, but before- We ruled it out without even really thinking about it. Henry said he wanted his own, but-and I used that, I put it in my ball of reasons, I had this long list of reasons for why it had to be ours, and they didn't even make any sense. Isabel tried to tell me, but I couldn'thear her." "You were so determined." "And another thing is, they don't talk about it in fertility clinics. I've spent the last two years in doctors' offices, and not once in all that time was the word adoption mentioned. Not once. Isn't that amazing? Not even by a nurse. So I didn't think about it." "And Henry won't mind?" "Oh, no. He won't mind." Now I wished I'd had the guts to say something to her sooner, or that Rudy had. But we were too tactful or something, or too intent on being accomplices to her obsession, trying too hard to be "supportive" to bring up an alternative.
"Rudy says we should try for a foreign child because that might be quicker," Lee was saying. "Maybe a Russian orphan, or Romanian. I was thinking a little Ukrainian Jew." She stopped looking at the sky and turned practical. "As soon as we eat, I have to call Henry." "And if it's a girl, she'll name it Isabel," Rudy said.
"Well, of course," I said. "And if it's a boy, Isadore." We smiled in the dark.
"Do you think we really have to get a new transient?" "A permanent," Lee corrected. "She said we did." We sighed. "There's this woman at work," Lee said.
We groaned.
"I guess I'll call my mother tonight." Rudy flipped her cigarette over the rail. "Sheesh, I'm surprised she didn't say I had to give up smoking." I don't know why-I just turned and gave her a strong, hard hug.
"Wow," she said, pleased. "You're getting so much better at that." "Am I?" "I've noticed it, too," Lee said.
"Hey, is anybody starving?" I said. But nobody moved. We didn't want to go in quite yet.
"You know what would be nice?" Rudy said. "If we all got old together." "Why wouldn't we?" "No, but I mean together." "Yeah," I said, "in an old ladies' home." I'd had this fantasy for years. "We'd sit out in our rocking chairs on the front porch of some neat old house in the country." "We'd still have all our faculties," Rudy decided, "we'd just be old." "And you'll still look great. I'll be fat, but Lee'll push me around in my wheelchair, because she'll still be tough and wiry." "Maybe I will, maybe I won't. If you want me to push you around, you'll have to be a lot nicer to me." "And we'll still like each other," Rudy said; "We'll play a lot of canasta." "Bridge," Lee corrected.
"And whenever one of us dies," I said, "we'll be cremated. But we won't dispose of the remains until the last one goes." "Okay, but then who'll do it?" "Isadore. Right out there." I- pointed in the direction of Isabel's spot, about fifty yards out in the invisible sea.
"Isadore?" "Your son. He'll be about sixty by then. I hope he keeps himself in shape for the swim." "Unlike some people." The moon loomed over the water. The crickets got louder and louder until they drowned out the sound of the waves. Across the street, two little boys and their father came out to shoot hoops in the driveway.
"Write a book about us," Isabel said. Could that be my subject? I couldn't quite see it. Real life was too damn chaotic; it didn't translate well. Fiction, now, fiction's a lot simpler. I've been thinking a mystery with some romance, some danger, maybe a little amnesia. I always like an amnesia story. It could still be about four women. Who belong to a club, and one gets killed. No, that's too sad. One's sister gets killed, and they team up to solve the crime. If this caught on, I could make it a series. The Four Fenimes. The Four Yuppie Femmes.
Title needs work.
But she said, "Write a book about us." Oh, Isabel, I don't know. (I talk to her like this now, as if she's standing next to me, shooting the breeze. I think we all do.) That sounds so adult, so mature. Let me dick around a little while longer, okay? Yes, I know, the time factor; life is short, and you never know how short, I know, I know.
All right, I'll think about it. But if I get stuck, I'm putting in amnesia.
"Dinner?" We went inside. The table looked pretty. We lit candles, used the cloth napkins. Didn't talk about how much less three is than four. Isabel was absolutely right, we had to get a new transient. ..
Afterward, everyone wanted to use the phone, Lee to call Henry, Rudy to call her mom, me-I just wanted the line free so Mick could get through.
All this business, all this outreach-we weren't prepared for it. We'd come here for a specific purpose, an ending, and here we were making all these new beginnings. Are you liking this, Isabel? Are you smiling and rubbing your hands together, feeling pretty complaisant up there? Over there? Wherever you are. Well, fine, good, I don't begrudge you a thing, not even smugness. I just wish you were here. You know? I just miss you.