What We Leave Behind (35 page)

“That’s not the way it works.”

“I thought, just maybe, if things had only gone the way they were supposed to, if you hadn’t given me up for adoption, if you hadn’t given me to someone else, then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten sick, maybe everything would have turned out just right.”

I recalled the day I found out my father was dead, and how I blamed myself, how if I hadn’t been born, this would have never happened. A child doesn’t think like an adult. A child doesn’t understand circumstance or chance, only the abrupt silence of a door that’s been closed to her for reasons belonging only to her.

“Damien used to say to me when we had a school assembly or something, ‘Even though King and Queen Omalara of Africa aren’t here, they love me just as much as my new mom and dad.’ But I never believed him.”

“Your parents have done a terrific job with you, Michelle, much better than I might have done. You need to understand the circumstances that led me to my decision. It’s not that I didn’t love you, God, I loved you too much. Things worked out for the best. You’ll understand that better when you get a little older.”

“What about my father?”

“First, I want to explain something to you.
I loved you
. I loved you long before I ever gave birth to you. You were created from a love that some people never experience. I cared about your father very much, but there were reasons we couldn’t be together, reasons I still don’t understand today, but you have to know that there was always love. Whatever else we were missing, whatever it was we didn’t have to make it last, we always had that feeling between us.”

Now probably wasn’t the time to ask if she knew how babies were made.

“What happened to him?”

“Your father never knew about you. We couldn’t be together. We’d had a fight, I guess you can say, and we parted ways, and then I found out that you were growing in me. I thought about calling to tell him, but I didn’t want to make things complicated for him. There were other options, and they were as limiting as any. I would have never gotten rid of you—
that
was never an option—but I also knew that I was just a kid and how could I give you the life you deserved? I wanted you in this world, and I wanted you to have everything you would ever dream of, but it wasn’t possible for me to be the one to give it to you.”

She interrupted my logical explanation to say, “I had all that.”

“I know you did,” I said with a smile, relieved by her perspective.

“I did,” she said again, trying her best to hold back the tears, wiping at her nose with the hospital sheet.

“I’m so glad because that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”

“I love my mom and dad. Even when I couldn’t make sense of adoption, I didn’t want it any other way.”

“I know that,” I told her. “Grown-ups, mothers, we have a way of understanding those kind of feelings.”

“Can you tell me about my father?” she asked. The girl was as relentless as her mother. “Does he live in New York like you?”

I had almost forgotten the lie that Jill Sammler had thoughtlessly bestowed upon her daughter.

“I live in Los Angeles.”

“But I thought…”

“I know what you thought, and I’m sorry.  We weren’t ready for your questions or your intuitiveness.”

“Does he know about me? Does he know I’m sick? Does he want to see me?”

I bit my lip and gave her the answers, “Yes, yes, and the last part’s tricky.”

Her little head was at a loss.

“He doesn’t want to see me?”

“He does,” I said, watching her head turn just so, unable to hide her curiosity.

“Don’t tell me,” she said with renewed energy. “He has green eyes.”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“And he’s smart and he’s funny and he’s a famous actor like my friend Polly’s dad.”

I laughed at her little game, knowing that there was nothing humorous about this type of guesswork, even if observing her piqued interest was fun and the truth would never amount to the expectations we place on idealized fantasy. She had probably dreamed of this moment, dreamed of him, as I had over the years, and now he would no longer be an apparition.

We were so engrossed in conversation that neither of us noticed the door swing open and the entrance of Jill Sammler. We were talking about something important. She could tell from the looks on our faces, the exchange between her baby girl and me. I watched as Michelle tensed up just so; the gentle spirit that only moments ago had welcomed me into her heart had closed herself off. She was trying to tell me something with her eyes, with the effusive glare. It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I would never betray her trust. The secret would remain ours.

“Hey, honey,” Jill said, leaning down to kiss her, touch her hair. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m fine, Ma. Mrs. Tauber came in here looking for you.”
An actress
, I thought.
My daughter would be an actress
.

“Yes,” I said, “I wanted to check and see how you were doing, but it can wait. I’ll leave you two alone.”

I lightly tapped Michelle’s wrist before I turned from her bedside. She would know that it meant she need not be afraid.

When I closed the door behind me, I knew that a bond had just taken form. Years from now, I might not remember the date, though I might remember it was a beautiful day by the insistence of a New York City cabdriver. I would remember the way it felt when my daughter first trusted me, the moment when we began our relationship.

Jonas was finishing up rounds before heading back to his office and said, “Let’s take a walk outside.”

“I have to get back to the hotel.”

“Come on, a quick walk. You can use the fresh air.” We ended up a few blocks down from the hospital at a park, where we took our seats on adjacent yellow swings. There was something soothing and comforting coming from Jonas.

“My husband’s in town,” I blurted out.

He nodded, staring at the brown ground beneath him, not really swinging but dragging himself back and forth.

“He doesn’t know about any of this. I’m going to tell him tonight.”

He looked up from his frozen gaze, turning to face me.

“Jess,” he began in a way that first stopped my breathing. The word might have been fine on its own, but the face…I didn’t have any more strength to hide from it. “I think we should have this baby.”

Hearing those words after days of tap dancing around them took a minute to process. All discussions regarding Michelle’s treatment had led to this. I watched my shoe as it dipped beneath the sand in front of me, unable to meet his stare.

I knew what he was proposing was in response to saving Michelle, but I wasn’t sure what having another child with Jonas would mean to me. I had once believed I was destined to love Jonas for the rest of my life. I chalked it up to old loves, something about how we never get over the first one. But over time Jonas faded into the background, a place I seldom visited, somewhere distant and grainy. When I’d come across his name or a memory would flicker, I’d gain access to the fuzzy picture, unclear to the human eye, but there and very real. I often equated it to a cavity. Sometimes my tongue would brush across the sensitive tooth, a system of checking, to see that the pain was still there. And even though it would hurt badly, just brushing up against it like that, there was an equal amount of comfort in the movement. The familiarity of the feeling was the sensation I was searching for, the comfort that it hadn’t left. The thought of extracting it was far more severe. And slowly over time, the pain diminished, as did the cavity, but the sensitivity remained.

Marty gave me the Novocain to upend the wound. Through his eyes I saw a different world, one filled with joy and possibility. I opened my heart in a way different from before, storing everything related to Jonas Levy, all the pieces of the puzzle that never quite fit together, in a place where no one would ever find them. And for a long time, I didn’t go searching for them either. It was a part of my history, what I had left behind. I was both proud of it and ashamed of it.

But what was I feeling now? I couldn’t get a grasp on it. In managing difficult times, I had always found the ability to compartmentalize. This over here, that over here. But this, this whole thing, there was only blurred vision, no light leading me toward a clearer path. Loving Jonas yesterday was getting mixed up with loving him today.

He was staring at me, awaiting a response. I was off somewhere important and he knew it. The eyes beckoned me for an answer. I could see in between the blinking motion that they were sad, worried, and hopeful all at the same time.

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I answered, hesitant to say any more.

“I know,” he answered. “I understand. I’ve thought about it as much as you have, and it’s more than a little outlandish. But I can’t sit here and watch my own flesh and blood deteriorate before my eyes. I took an oath.”

He waited a few minutes before beginning again. There were more reasons he had to explain.

“I love you, Jess. I’ve always loved you. I don’t know what I might have done at the time, when we were kids, but if you had come to me and told me that you were pregnant, I’d like to think I would have made some radical changes in my life. But you didn’t.”

“That’s unfair,” I said. “You know why I didn’t tell you. I cared about you too much.”

“I want to have this child with you to save our daughter. I would request custody, and that way you don’t have to worry about your husband. He won’t have this situation rubbed in his face.”

He had taken the reins, and I hadn’t even gotten on the horse yet. “If Michelle reaches remission after this second round of treatments, and assuming we get pregnant immediately, we could witness a transplant by the following year at around the same time.”

“Doesn’t that all depend on this child being a match?”

“I’m hopeful, Jess, aren’t you?”

“How do we know she’ll even survive a bone marrow transplant?”

He looked so convinced, so sure, so Jonas. It was hard to imagine the years that had passed us by. Being so close to him, his hands gripped around the swing’s chain, there were memories of my youth flooding my pulse—his hands on my leg, his arms around my shoulders. I saw in that split second that his mind was already made up. It was my turn to decide a fate that would again change everything around me.

I stood up from the swing. “Marty’s waiting for me at the hotel.” I owed my husband the truth, and maybe then we could go back to the life in which I once had a peaceful existence. Maybe there, speaking with Marty, I’d find the answers.

“Think about it,” he said, standing next to me, so close I could see the lines on his face. Then he turned to walk in the opposite direction, and I watched him and thought about how easy it would be to run after him and beg him to hold me again.

Dialing the hotel, I reached Marty on the first ring. We agreed to meet at the Seaport in half an hour. I took my time, knowing that things would never be the same, wanting to freeze the passing of that moment.

He was waiting when I approached the pier, leaning against the stone wall adjacent to the Gap. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, something I hadn’t seen him do since we had Ari. The pillow of smoke formed above his head as he exhaled a foreboding steam. He had to know that I was nearby, turning around abruptly, throwing the butt on the floor, and stomping it with his boot.

“Hey, pretty lady,” he said, as I moved in closer.

“Hey, yourself,” I smiled back. His arm weaved itself around my shoulders, dragging me in one smooth gesture to his side.

I didn’t waste any time. I figured I had waited long enough. He deserved to know the truth. He deserved to know the direction we might be headed. As we tiptoed along the water’s edge, hardly noticing the cloud of cold air that wrapped us in its hands, I told my husband my story.

Marty already knew about my love for Jonas. He knew how we’d said our good-byes and that a part of my heart was closed off to anybody’s reach. What he didn’t know were the much larger truths. I filled in the blanks. Mulholland. Tuesday night.

“There was a baby, a little girl. I was sixteen, Marty, my choices were limited. I couldn’t subject her to a life without a father. You know what living without mine had done to me.” He sat there stonefaced. If I had wanted him to sanction this, it didn’t look promising.

“Jonas never knew about her. I didn’t tell him.”

He saw I was capable of lying to the only two men I had ever loved.

“It was a part of my life I wanted to be over, forgotten.”

Marty’s reaction at first was calm, but as accusations flew from his mouth, the calmness dissipated. “I can forgive the act, Jess, and the decision you made, but I don’t know if I can live with how easily you looked me in the face and lied. You turned the things we shared together into bullshit. From the start, we were based on a lie, and the firsts that we shared were all lies,
fucking
lies.” I winced at the words. Marty had never spoken to me like this before. I had to turn away. “How did you look at me every day, Jess? How’d you sit there as we marveled as the baby grew inside of you? The excitement, the nausea? It was all bullshit, all of it.”

“Just because it wasn’t the first time didn’t make it less special.”

“You lied to me. The whole time you were lying, and it was a lie that just got bigger and bigger…this thing…it’s not something you can hide from. It’s a person.”

“I’m sorry.” It came out as a whisper.

“You should be,” he chastised. “
You
did this.
You
. I never asked for this.
You
did this to us.”

Words did not come easily, even for me. Shattered glass would be easier to imagine. One piece was Marty, one piece was Jonas, one piece was Michelle, one piece was me.

“Is she here in New York? Is that why you made up that bogus story about work? God, Jess, I would never have thought you were capable.”

“There are things I needed to take care of out here.”

“
Things
? What the
hell
does that mean?”