If You Lived Here (12 page)
When we come within sight of the window at the front of the store, Shelley stops. A man in a blue raincoat is sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the window. His knees press against his chest, and his head has fallen to the side, as if he’s passed out. Shelley goes to the window and looks down at him. I’ve only met him once, years ago at a funeral, but I suspect it’s her husband.
“You think he want to eat some noodles?” I ask.
Shelley holds her hand against the glass. “I don’t think so,” she tells me. For a long time, she just stands there, unwilling to step outside.
artin walked to
the market from our house, which is two miles, at least. I wouldn’t mind, on a nice day, walking there past the sweeping lawns of Forest Hills, but on a rainy day it’s ridiculous. Martin’s
dust-colored jeans have turned a muddy brown, his sneakers leak puddles, and water runs in streams down his rain jacket and into the cushions of the car. A rolled-up and water-soaked magazine sticks out of his jacket pocket like some kind of talisman that has shown no effect. I can hear him shivering and I reach over to turn off the fan so he doesn’t get sick. The air in the car feels close, heavy with moisture, like the inside of a cloud. Out on Oleander, the rain has picked up again. The storm gutters are overflow-ing and the car slides through the patches of high water with a
whoooosh
. I turn down Country Club Drive, keeping my eyes on the road. Hanoi in the summer often gets sudden, torrential rains. Does it ever look like this?
“Why did you walk?” I ask, as if I’m merely curious.
“I’m trying to hold things together,” he tells me, as if that explains it. He leans his elbows against his knees, rubbing his face with his hands. At
some point last night, I heard him drive off in the Lincoln to make the retrieval at the hospital. He never came to bed, so I suppose he stayed up all night. That would explain why he hasn’t gone in to work, but why the walk in the rain? And where are his glasses? I imagine them bobbing forlornly down some storm drain on Forest Hills Drive, but they could, of course, be lying forgotten on the kitchen table.
“I just want to explain what I meant last night.” His voice sounds shaky, like something held together with spit and Scotch tape.
“Will ‘explaining’ still come down to you refusing to adopt this baby?” I ask.
“There are things I’ve never told you. Things that might help you understand.”
“Will you still refuse to adopt?” “Well, yes.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. Really, I’ve heard enough already. I reach my hand over and pat his knee. I have rarely seen Martin so rattled, and never so rattled over me. Once, not that many years ago, he told me that I make his life happier, less heavy, easier to bear. I don’t know exactly how he’s feeling now, but I know that I’m not making anything any easier. As for me, I feel only a kind of distant concern, the way I would feel toward anyone who had just trudged two miles through a storm with bad footgear and no umbrella. Otherwise, I’m detached. Martin’s decision pushed me toward mine. And watching Mai cook and manage her store, all alone—and in a foreign country, too—helped me to see the kinds of challenges that people overcome. If Mai could build an entirely new life for herself, maybe I could, too.
“His name is Hai Au,” I say, trying to pronounce it exactly like Mai did. “The baby. Hai Au. It’s a seabird.”
Martin doesn’t seem to have heard me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him run his hands through his wet hair. Flecks of water spray against my cheek. “I’m burned out,” he says. “I can’t start all over again. I can’t take any more grief. I can’t even take the possibility of grief.”
He seems to hope that once I understand his feelings, I will come around, but he should never ask for that. There is something immoral about asking a person to give up anything as essential as having a child.
Would you ask someone to give up their health? Their vision? The possibility of joy?
“Shelley? You don’t really care, do you?”
If this is the time to reveal information, then I’ll do that. “I could have flown to Bratislava. For Sonya. The mother was willing to meet with me.”
He looks at me. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t go because you needed me here,” I tell him. And then, because I can’t resist, I add, “I gave up that baby for you.” In a sense, it doesn’t mat-ter now. He doesn’t want a child in any case. But, still, I want him to know. The air feels so moist that I could almost believe the walls of the car were porous. Martin says, “I’m sorry.” His voice is quiet and gentle. I believe him, too, but I need more now. My thoughts return to Hai Au, the little seabird. I hope that he is dry and warm over there in Vietnam. For the first time in so long, I feel light, almost weightless, relieved of the burden of convincing Martin to come along with me. How silly, I think, that I took so long to figure it out. “The choice is yours,” I tell him. “I’m
adopting this baby. You can either adopt him with me or not.”
Martin says nothing. We reach the corner of Market Street and I stop at a red light. In front of us, the cars passing through the intersection are only hazy shadows in the rain. Without their headlights, they’d disappear altogether. Next to me, Martin shifts in his seat, causing his raincoat to squeak as it rubs against the wet upholstery. His prunish hands, pale and bloated, rest motionless on his knees. I almost feel sorry for him.
“You talk like you’re adopting a puppy,” he says. “You promise that you’ll be the one to feed it and take it out for walks. But a baby doesn’t work that way, Shelley.”
This reminder that he’s a parent and I am not wipes out any potential for sympathy I might have had. Perhaps he’s purposefully trying to hurt me. If so, it would be a first. In our years together, there are lines we’ve never crossed. But that was long ago, before this.
Lightning flashes across the tops of the trees and, a moment later, I hear the thunder break. My voice brims with a confidence I don’t yet feel. I say, “I know how a baby works.” And then I jump. “What I mean is, if you don’t adopt this baby with me, I’m leaving you.”
We drive the rest of the way home without speaking. The damp air feels steamy. Now that I’ve said it, I don’t feel angry anymore. Instead, I feel relieved, and exhausted, too, as if I’ve accomplished some despicable but necessary task. I pull into our driveway, bringing the car as close to the kitchen door as I can get. “Put your wet clothes in the sink and I’ll stick them in the wash,” I say, needing to hang on to some reminder of our domestic life together.
Martin stares straight ahead, toward the line of live oaks that stand like guards along the back of our property. When he finally speaks, his voice strains from the effort of trying to control himself. “When did you stop seeing me as the man you loved and start seeing me as some tool you needed to get a baby?”
I tell him the truth: “I never did.” He turns to look at me, anger and despair mottling that precious face. “Why can’t you believe that I could love you and need a baby, too?” I ask.
Now he’s crying, which is the worst thing I’ve witnessed, maybe ever. And the sorrow spreads through the close car like some airborne disease. Until this morning, my desire to have a child has consumed me. Now that I’ve made my decision, however, I feel nothing but pain, and I realize that this single moment will affect our lives forever.
I reach out my hand to him, but he pulls away. This is not a grief that we can share.
“I just want to make sure everything’s in order,” I tell Carolyn Burns on the phone. Somehow, sensing Martin’s hesitation, I haven’t been pestering my agency as much as I used to. Now, though, I have no reason to hold back.
“Terrific,” she says. It’s a professional response, not an emotional one, but at least it’s something positive for a change. Over the next twenty minutes, we go through everything: plane tickets, hotel reservations, how many forms I’ll have to have notarized before my departure. “And your husband won’t be joining you, will he?”
“Right,” I tell her, which is true. “We’ve decided that I’ll travel on
my own.” I have to be careful in what I say about Martin. There are two phases of the formal adoption, the first in Vietnam and then the second, a readoption, here in the States. As I see it, Martin’s name can stay on the documents for Vietnam. Then, he can simply fail to readopt when I get home. “There won’t be any problem with that, will there?”
“Not at all. You can expect to travel in about a month.” “A month?” It almost seems too soon.
After hanging up with Carolyn Burns, I’m putting Martin’s wet clothes in the wash when the phone rings. It’s my sister, Lindi. “You have to be there at noon exactly,” she tells me.
“Where?”
“I knew you’d forget. You have to pick up Keely at day care! I’m at the end of my rope here, Shelley. Keely’s birthday party? Remember?”
“I remembered,” I lie. “We have a Jewish funeral this afternoon,” I tell her. “I’m just really busy.” During my first few years in the profession, I got away with such excuses, but no one buys them now.
Lindi runs her life like a general conducting a military campaign, and she considers my obligation to her daughter’s birthday party to be similar to a government’s commitment to a multilateral operation. “I will be so disappointed in you, Shelley.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I promise.
I hang up with Lindi and glance at my watch. It’s nearly noon. My stepson Abe is coming down from Chapel Hill for the party. If I pick Keely up at day care, he will watch her for me this afternoon. Still, if Lindi hadn’t called, I would have forgotten Keely completely. And here I am, planning to take ultimate responsibility for a child.
The rain has slowed to a drizzle by the time Keely and I get home. Abe, thank God, is already standing at the kitchen counter. The sling on his arm from his bike accident doesn’t keep him from digging his fork into the Tupperware containing Mai’s
bún thang
. In his teens, Abe had trouble with acne and hated himself. Now, the faint scars and his lean build make him look like a world-weary rock star, though he’s shy and hasn’t figured out that he’s handsome yet. He grins when he sees I’ve brought along the birthday girl, who lunges at his legs.
“Did you see your dad?” I ask, kissing his cheek. I set Keely in a high chair.
Abe leans over the noodles like an ardent lover. “He’s upstairs. He looks awful.” I can’t tell what Martin’s told him.
I pull some bowls out of the cabinet and set them on the table, pour Mai’s broth into a saucepan to heat, then put some noodles on Keely’s tray. “Abe, do you have to eat out of the container? Isn’t your dissertation on bacteria?”
“Not that kind.”
I grimace at him. “It doesn’t even have the broth in it yet.” In truth, I find this mundane interaction consoling. Life can go on, apparently, even if you’re getting a divorce.
Keely strings her noodles across her nose. “Muk,” she yells. I pour her some milk.
The three of us sit at the table, eating
bún thang,
discussing the bull-frog tadpole that Keely is raising at day care. I can hear Martin moving around upstairs, but he doesn’t appear until I’m up at the sink washing dishes. With a shower and a shave, he’s managed to turn himself back into the conscientious undertaker.
“Hey, birthday girl!” Clearly, he has more presence of mind than I have. He has not forgotten.
“I two!” Keely reaches her arms into the air, signaling that she’s willing to hug him. A glaze of milk forms a five o’clock shadow on her upper lip.
“Wait a minute,” he says. He gingerly lifts her out of the high chair and carries her to the sink, where he rinses her face and hands with a wet rag. “Okay, now. Happy birthday!” he tells her. Then he tosses her into the air. Keely shrieks.
Abe and I lean against the counter, watching them. Moments like this one used to make me sick for a child. Now I feel sick for Martin as well. “Tonight’s Keely’s party,” I tell him.
His face registers surprise. “Is that so?” he asks Keely. “What time?” “Bedtime,” she says somberly.