Detours (9 page)

“Did you follow his advice?”

“We found a place in Atlanta that guaranteed they could keep the little swimmers alive for at least twelve years. Nathan did his part, and they bottled ’em up, but we restricted access to only the two of us.”

“So it was cancer?”

“No, his real problem was referred pain from kidney stones. Once the stones were dissolved, his testicles stopped hurting.”

“And your account at the sperm bank?”

“Still there, as far as I know, with Nathan’s wigglers in suspended animation, hoping for the chance to prove their motility.”

Sam lifted her head and woofed twice, the first sign of life she’d offered since claiming her snooze spot right after Natalie left with Nathan.

“Any chance you’d give my dog a potty break?” Ellis asked.

“Sure.” Mary leaned down and patted Sam’s rump. “I’ll put her out back and then make a trip to the bathroom to have a potty break of my own.”

“I’ll use the hall bath and take a turn, too.”

While Mary and Sam headed for the kitchen, Ellis made her way to the bathroom. She’d discovered how to stand on one crutch while pulling down her sweatpants and underwear with her free hand. She gripped the edge of the vanity and lowered herself onto the seat, reflecting on the long chat she and Mary had just shared.

Not much common ground, but I like her. We could maybe make this work.
She caught sight of Natalie’s pajamas hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
I wonder if Nathan has a girlfriend. And I wonder how she’d feel about raising a stepdaughter.

Around seven p.m., Mary excused herself to check her e-mails. Ellis used the time to watch
60 Minutes.
When she finished on the computer, Mary roamed around the living room picking up odds and ends Natalie had left there.

“Even though I love that Nathan and Natalie get along so well, and even though I always feel like it’s the start of a vacation when he pulls out of the driveway with her, when it gets to this time of day, I miss my baby and wish she were here with me.” Mary lifted the sweatshirt she’d just claimed from atop the bookcase and held it to her nose. “Yep, that’s my girl. If I go blind, I’ll still always know if it’s really Natalie standing beside me.” Mary tossed the sweatshirt over her shoulder. “Unless I lose my sense of smell, too.”

“What makes this time of day so special?” Ellis asked from her seldom-changed, fully-reclined location on the sofa. Sam sat on the floor, her head resting on Ellis’s shoulder.

“This is when I start getting her ready for bedtime. House rule is that Nat’s in bed by nine, though it’s anybody’s guess when she’ll actually stop talking and settle down to sleep. If I start around seven-thirty, by the time she’s bathed, changed, and out of arguments, I can get her there by nine.” Mary tried to decipher the look on Ellis’s face. “You must think I’m some kind of nut case.”

“Not at all. I don’t pretend to understand what it feels like to have a child.” She gave Sam’s head a generous rub. “I know how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel when ol’ Sam here acts like I’m the best thing in her life. That’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to knowing what a mother feels.”

“You never wanted kids?” Mary asked. “The two-legged kind, I mean.” She paused in her collection process long enough to give Sam a quick scratch behind her ears. “No disrespect intended, Sam.”

Mary anticipated a quick answer and was surprised when Ellis seemed to contemplate her response. “Not of my own, no.”

Mary dropped the armload of miscellany she’d rounded up onto the ottoman. “Did you want someone else’s kids?”

Once again, Ellis seemed to take a long time to answer. “No, I wouldn’t say that, either.”

Mary sat down in the glider, the chair she’d spent most of the afternoon and early evening in as she and Ellis compared notes on their lives. “Then what would you say?” Mary was greeted with yet another uncomfortably elongated lull in the conversation.

“I’m afraid anything I say will come out all wrong.” Ellis used her good foot to push against the far end of the sofa and sit up a little straighter. “We’ve had a good day together, and I don’t want to ruin it.”

“We talked about everything from our families to religion to sperm banks, and we got along fabulously well. Why would talking about kids ruin things?”

“It wouldn’t. It’s just that—”

The ringing of the portable phone on the end table interrupted Ellis’s thought.

Mary checked the clock. “Twenty minutes to eight. That’ll be Natalie. Nathan has probably told her it’s time to start getting ready for bed, and calling me is one of her typical delay maneuvers.” Mary lifted the phone. She said to Ellis, “I’ll only be a minute or two,” and pushed the talk button. She pointed to her chest and then to the hallway. She mouthed the word, “bedroom,” then held her index finger across her lips and pointed to the TV.

Ellis nodded. She heard Mary’s side of the conversation as she left the room. “Hi, honey. How was the movie? What did you eat for dinner tonight?” Sam jumped up from her place by the sofa and followed Mary.

Ellis fixed her eyes on the television screen. Maybe she could pick up the thread of the story Leslie Stahl was reporting, or at least get a chuckle out of Andy Rooney’s witticisms.

And maybe she’d run for president or form a rock band or win a Nobel Prize in physics. She hit the “off” button on the remote control. The memories of one of her last conversations with her ex-lover, Becky Blumfeld, washed over her like the surge from behind a burst dam.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

She and Becky had stood in the entryway to their jointly-owned house in the Candler Park neighborhood in east Atlanta. They’d been together almost ten years—ten great years, in Ellis’s estimation. Ten great years minus one essential ingredient by Becky’s reckoning.

“You know I don’t want to lose you, Becky.” Ellis fought the tangle of emotions inside her. Losing Becky would be worse than death. The argument had grown old from hundreds of repetitions, but the prospect of life without Becky made Ellis hope their differences could be resolved.

“I don’t want to lose you, either, Ellis, but I told you right from the start that I wanted to have a family.”

“We
are
a family. You, me, two cats, a dog. We live in a nice house. We’re both doing jobs we love. We’ve got a few bucks in the bank. Your parents like me. My brother and sister ignore us—which is just fine.” Ellis lifted Becky’s chin with her fingertips. “What’s wrong with the life we’ve got?”

“What we have is fine. But there’s a huge missing piece, and without it, I’ll never feel complete.”

“You’re stuck in a fairy-tale world.” Ellis spun away and waved her hands in the air in exasperation. “Having a baby would complicate everything.”

“I agree. It would affect every detail of our lives, but I see it as a blessing, not a complication. Yes, babies change everything, but in a good way.”

“What’s good about not being able to sleep late on the weekends or to take off and run to the beach for a couple of days? What’s good about needing a babysitter every time we want to see a movie or go for a bike ride? Hell, we couldn’t even make love when we wanted to if we had to worry about a baby’s schedule.” Ellis stomped a few paces away, then returned to Becky, who started to cry. Ellis reached out to hold her, but Becky pushed her hands away.

“Don’t, Ellis. We’ve had this argument for years. You won’t change your mind, and I can’t change mine.” Becky cried harder. “If you won’t agree to let me be inseminated, then we just can’t stay together.”

Ellis tipped her head back and forced herself to wait before speaking. She lowered her head and looked Becky in the eye. “It’s not like taking a wild notion to get a horse or raise sheep. A kid is forever. You can’t take it back to the store if it turns out to be more work than you expected or if it gets sick a lot and costs piles of money.”

“I know that. And no amount of money can replace what it would feel like to hold my own child in my arms and feel its heart beating against my chest. No movie or bicycle ride or walk by the ocean could ever be as entertaining as hearing my child call me ‘Mom’ and watching her take her first steps.” Becky sucked in a shaky breath. “I was a hell of a lot of work for my parents, and I cost them a mountain of money, but I remember the look on my dad’s face when I got my MBA at Emory. My mother has scrapbooks full of my report cards and track ribbons and programs from my piano recitals.” Becky clenched her fists and glowered at Ellis. “I want my chance to be proud of my son or daughter. And I don’t care if he’s a C-student, finishes last in every race he ever runs, and can’t pick out
Twinkle Twinkle
after six years of lessons.”

Becky suddenly stopped crying and fixed a withering gaze on Ellis. “When we had our commitment ceremony, you promised to always believe in the future.”

“And I meant it.”

“What could be a bigger belief in the future than having a child?” Sparks fairly flew from Becky’s eyes.

Ellis couldn’t meet her gaze. She stared at the floor and spoke softly. “It was so different for me. My childhood was nothing like yours.” She knew what was coming next, and even uttered the words with Becky as she said them.

“We’re not your parents…”

Becky exploded. She thumped her fists on Ellis’s chest. “Damn you, Ellis. Damn you to hell and beyond. You win. I’ll spare you the horrible inconvenience of having a child. You can fatten up your bank account and keep your schedule free and clear for whatever spur-of-the-moment adventure might beckon. Take your precious freedom and get the hell out of my life. I won’t tie you down with something so wretchedly confining as a child who’d have the unmitigated gall to think of you as a parent.”

Ellis stood in stunned silence. Becky seemed to sink into herself. Her voice broke as she said, “I love you, Ellis. I’ve loved you as best I know how. The worst part is I know I’ll love you for the rest of my life, but I can’t do this anymore.” She smiled, but it was without warmth or light. “I’m thirty-five, and I’m not willing to wait any longer to accomplish the one thing that I’ve known for thirty years I need to do.”

Becky picked up an overnight bag and opened the door. “I’ll be at my mom’s. We’ll talk in a couple of days. Be thinking about what we should do with the house and which of us should take the animals.”

“Becky, please…”

Becky paused on the threshold. “It’s no use, babe. The one thing that you could do to make me change my mind isn’t even a possibility. If it had been, I know you’d have done it years ago.”

With that, Becky was gone, and Ellis was left with what she thought she wanted, but somehow, freedom didn’t feel at all like it ought to.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

And now, here she was cheerfully established on the couch of a woman with a child, and she still had no reason to believe that being a parent was all that fulfilling. What she’d seen of Natalie only underscored what she’d envisioned: a lot of thankless work for a demanding, unreasonable, small person who gave back precious little for all the money and energy expended on her.

Mary returned to the living room, portable phone in hand. Ellis said, “So, motherhood duties completed for another day?”

“In your dreams. I had to promise to call her at five minutes to nine to say good night.” Mary put the phone in its place. “You’re due for one more round of ice and a pain pill. Do you want something to eat first?”

“No, in fact, I think I might skip the pain pill. I haven’t had one since right before Nathan and Natalie left, and I’m doing fine. If I can, I’d like to get by without it. I probably should take the anti-inflammatory, though.”

Mary took a step toward the kitchen.

“I’ve gotten good at getting around on my stick legs, you know.” Ellis hefted one of her crutches. “I could get it myself.”

“You could, but I’m going to grab a beer and some pretzel sticks anyway, so I might as well bring it to you.”

“Any chance you’ve got two beers out there?”

“Yeah, I do, but I don’t think you should have any alcohol until you’ve been off the Darvocet for twenty-four hours.”

“What was it Nathan said about you being an overprotective mother?”

“Thank goodness Natalie was out of the room when he brought it up. She’d have gone on for an hour about what a pain in the ass I am.”

Mary went to the kitchen and came back with a Coke for Ellis, a beer for herself, a bag of pretzels, and Ellis’s pill. Ellis pulled the ottoman near enough that she could sit with her foot resting on it. Mary sat at the other end of the sofa.

“Don’t let me forget to call Natalie, okay? As much as I ride her about remembering to keep her promises, the very last thing I need to do is give her ammunition by forgetting my own.” Mary took a long drink from her bottle of Budweiser. “I’m so glad the beer truck that rolled yesterday wasn’t the only one in town.” She set the bottle on the end table and grabbed the pretzel bag. “Maybe Natalie wouldn’t be such a nitnoy if she weren’t an only child. She’s so accustomed to being the absolute center of attention. It was bad enough when Nathan and I were still together, but we both made the classic mistake of trying to overcompensate after we divorced. She can be a total tyrant.”

“Did you and Nathan want more kids?”

“Absolutely. And if I hadn’t had to have intercourse to get them, we’d probably have had three or four.” Mary passed the pretzels to Ellis. “And if that had happened, we wouldn’t have split up, and you and I wouldn’t be sharing this delicious bag of white flour and salt.”