What We Leave Behind (36 page)

He lit another cigarette, and I told him how she was sick. I told him she might die.

The terminal facts were the only things that had the power to freeze time and reactions. His voice sounded changed, but it was still Marty saying, “I’m sorry to hear that, but what does it have to do with you?”

I outlined Michelle’s options and what a full-blooded sibling would mean.

“Is there another child?” he asked. “Is she the only one?” The way he asked me was insulting.

“Damn it, Marty. I’m trying my best to make this thing right. I could have been any one of those girls you screwed who wound up pregnant, any one of them. Who knows for sure if there aren’t any little Martys running around Los Angeles right now.”

He grabbed my arm, “But you’re not one of those girls, Jess. You’re my fucking wife, the mother of my child.”

“And that hasn’t changed,” I said. “I’m still all those things…I still want to be those things.”

“You’ve been gone for five months.”

“What do you want from me, Marty? So much has happened. It hasn’t been the easiest time. My head’s really messed up.” I wasn’t about to throw in his face what I’d seen on MTV the other night.

He was slipping away. I would have preferred his hand around my arm again, even if in anger. “I know you’re upset, and just as I made that time in my life disappear, I wish I could make this go away, but I can’t. This little girl needs me. Her life depends on it.”

It was painful to watch the slow and subtle transformation on Marty’s face as I continued talking, the way his tightly controlled jaw and eyes turned sad, how he first felt empathy, then shock, and finally anger.  The cigarette went flying.

“So what are you telling me?” he asked, his fury no longer containable, rage taking over. “You’re going to screw this guy and have another baby so there’s a full-blood sibling to save your daughter?

“You have to be kidding me,” he said as I turned my head down, staring at the pavement, looking at anything but his face. “This is a fucking joke,” he shouted, as his arms reached for his head, shaking and nodding in disbelief.

“I wouldn’t joke about something like this,” I remarked.

“You’re considering
fucking
Jonas Levy and having a child with him?”

He backed away from me as if the close proximity would spread the insidious disease that had taken over my brain and disrupted my rational train of thought.

I tried to think of something to say, anything to ease the tension, but what he was implying was correct. I was asking for my husband’s blessings to do the unthinkable.

“I wouldn’t be actually having sex with him.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“What if it was Ari?” I asked. “What if he was the one fighting for his life? Wouldn’t you do anything to save him?”

“It’s not Ari, not even close, and other than blood, what’s your responsibility to this kid? You don’t even know her.”

“How can you say that?” I spat at him. “How can you minimize this? She’s my child, and even though I didn’t raise her, she’s part of me, and you, of all people, should respect that.”

“I can’t believe you are deluding yourself into thinking this is logical. It would be one thing if you and I were faced with this and decided to have a child again, a married couple with a foundation where it’s legally and morally acceptable.”

“I told you it was complicated. It affects a lot more people than just us.”

“Jonas. I’m assuming you’ve spoken to him?”

I figured it would be best to forego anymore dishonesty. “I’ve seen him.”

Marty took a deep breath. I watched as the air filled him up with thoughts he couldn’t put into words, accusations he wasn’t ready to hurl. A boat hurried along the river, releasing a loud horn into the air, giving him time to think it through.

“Do you love this guy?” he asked. “I mean, has this been going on? Have you been carrying on with him all this time?” He was humbled, and there I was, unsure if this made me sad or somewhat satisfied. “Is there something else you’re not telling me?” Marty asked, cross-examining me with his eyes, “something that would help me understand why you’d risk everything we’ve built together to save his child?”

“I love her,” I whispered. “Already, I love her. She came from me, my body, and there might be a part of Ari in her, or a part of my mother or maybe even my father. That’s my life, Marty, a piece of me. You can’t ask me to turn away from that.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, pausing so the words had time to sink in. “Do you still love him?” he asked. “Because if you do…”

“That’s not what this is about, Marty. It’s about a girl with little hope, and there are two people in the world who might be able to change that. I know you’d do the same, I know you. You’d be able to put that other stuff aside and do the right thing because that’s who you are.” I had to take a breath before adding, “And, no, there hasn’t been anything going on all this time.”

“Is this about the baby?” he asked.

“You mean Joshua? He has a name.”

“Maybe you’re trying to compensate for his loss. This isn’t going to bring him back. It’s only going to make things worse. It’s going to pull us further apart.”

“You’ve done a good job of that already.”

“How you can say that is an outrage,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “I’ve tried for months to save our marriage. This is such bullshit.”

He started to walk away. I wanted to follow him, but his walking away from me packed me with so much fear, the only way I could diffuse it was to be angry. When he had reached a safe distance, he turned around and said, “I understand why you’re doing this, I do, in theory. You’re an amazing, strong woman with a huge heart, but in practice, in the context of our life today, I don’t see any way we’ll get through this together. You’re not even capable of answering a simple question.”

“I answered you. I told you it hasn’t been going on all this time. I haven’t seen or spoken to Jonas Levy in thirteen years.”

“That wasn’t the question I was referring to.”

He began to back away from me again.

“I asked you if you loved him.”

I returned to the hotel, and he was gone. There was no sign of him having been there at all. The bed was made. The place was in perfect order, and Marty was nowhere to be found. I lifted my cell phone from the table and began to dial his numbers, but they went directly to voice mail. I called down to the front desk. They said they hadn’t seen him since this morning when he got into a cab with me. I looked out the window and the darkness that descended over the city and knew he was gone. Not just from the hotel, gone from New York. I could no longer feel him there.

I picked up the phone again, this time dialing our home in California. There was no answer. When I saw it was four o’clock there, I figured my mother had taken Ari to the playground. I was alone and exhausted. The bed lay before me so I slumped myself down, nowhere else to go but beneath the warm comforter. I hid beneath the crisp folds, remembering how many people before me had lain across the fabric. The germs were rampant, and I didn’t even care. This was my refuge, and I shared my sorrows with the soothing pillow. I ached for the baby I had lost, for the baby I gave up and now might lose again, for the love I once shared with Jonas, and for a marriage that was probably over. I racked my head with the unborn possibility of hope, the symbol this baby would stand for, the gift I could give Jonas, the gift I could give Michelle. I wasn’t sure if I could ever learn to separate the two.

I didn’t hear from Marty that night. My mother called to tell me that he was home, asking what was going on between us.

The decision I faced quieted her, quieted me. I was being pulled into a deep, dark sea with no more strength to ride the oversized waves. At least, if I were in a river, there’d be some direction, some range of motion. I was anchored down by the stillness of indecision. “I feel so stuck, so limited,” I said. “Any direction I move in, someone is going to get hurt.”

“This is a bigger decision than anyone should have to make, but please try to figure out a way to make it work with Marty, or that little boy of yours is going to inherit all your problems.” The thought of Ari suffering stayed with me the duration of our conversation.

“I wish I could be there for you,” my mother said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come out to New York?”

I was sure. I hadn’t even called Beth yet. This was something I needed to do alone. “It’s more important you’re there for Ari,” I said.

“I’m worried about you.”

“As you should,” I answered her, not making any bones about the fact that I was a complete wreck. “I always screw things up.”

“You couldn’t have predicted any of this would happen.”

We hung up and I closed my eyes. There are people who spend years behind bars for unspeakable crimes, their physical constraints visible. Others commit sins, and although not punishable by law, their sentences are as confining as those in jail. The burden of my sins was condemning me, emotional constraint was my punishment. The lie that had sprouted out of love had turned into something that I realized might destroy an innocent child, a decent marriage, a good man. These were the nooses I carried around with me.

I had to face the unthinkable, conceiving another child with the one who had been the great love of my life, the one who still swore he loved me, only this time, for reasons barely a handful of people would understand. Hester Prynne had better move over, I thought. I was starting a new breed of adulteress women, one that combined heroism with a dash of betrayal. Was there not a more sympathetic name for that character than Hester?

The sound of loud music made me jump. It came from the clock beside the bed. I hadn’t remembered setting the alarm. Fortunately for me, it was only eight forty-five at night. When we were in the seventh grade, Beth and I went to Palm Springs with her family. The morning that we checked out of our hotel, we set the alarms on the clocks to go off at three in the morning. We thought it was funny to wake the people up, but there was nothing funny about it at all. I was about to lower the clock radio, change the channel from the country music, but the song’s lyrics stopped me. Keith Urban was singing one of his wistful songs about a woman he loved, and it hooked me right away. There was the night in LA when Marty and I were in our almost-dating stage, hanging out in his office after everyone had gone home, talking about what would bring us to our knees, and I said, “A man singing an original love song to me in a crowded, dark, smoke-filled bar.”

The next night, I was whisked off to the Whisky a Go Go on Sunset with Jeff Walker when Marty walked onto the stage and proceeded to sing “Mixed Emotions” by the Rolling Stones. It wasn’t original, and it wasn’t a typical love song. Although Mick Jagger joined him midway on-stage, it was Marty singing the words that told me what he wanted from me. It brought me to my knees.

The telephone rescued me from further nostalgia. There was a voice on the other end I didn’t recognize. She called me by name, as if she knew me, but her matter-of-fact drawl did not belong to anyone I knew.

“It’s Amy, Jessie, Amy Levy,” she said, and at the sound of her name, I stood up from the bed. “I’m in the lobby,” she said. “Can you come down?”

The elevator doors opened and there emerged Amy Levy, all grown up.

“Jess, it’s so good to see you!” she said, and we hugged each other as if time hadn’t passed at all.

I would have come right out and asked why she was there, but I already knew. “I heard you’re training to be a famous surgeon. Look at you all grown-up.”

“I had to do something with all the precision and poise I learned in ballet. Gosh, it’s so great seeing you again. You’re still so tall,” she said, looking up at me. “I think I stopped growing in the ninth grade.”

“How old are you now, twenty-five?”

“Good memory.”

She wasn’t twelve anymore, that was clear. Her hair was straighter than I’d remembered—cut short—and I admired the same gorgeous shade of red. Her face had matured. She was sophisticated and self-assured.

“Can we sit for a minute?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, taking a seat at one of the couches off the lobby and not wasting any time. “I know why you’re here.”

She crossed her legs and straightened her skirt. “It’s none of my business, I know.”

“It impacts all of us, Amy. Michelle’s your niece. Your mother has a grandchild.”

She had a far-off look in her eyes. “It must have been hard for you to give her up.” Then she brightened and said, “She asked that I say hello. She wanted to be here.”

Neither of us brought up her own adoption and what all of this stirred up in her.

She said, “Mom always liked you.”

“How is she?”

“She’s okay. Losing my dad, she just never got over that. It’s been hard for her.”

“Did she ever remarry?” I asked.

“She gets proposed to a lot, but she swears she’ll never get married again.”

“Your dad would’ve wanted her to be happy.”

“She is. She started an organization for underprivileged kids in Boston that gives them access to music and the arts. Almost every record label and film studio from LA to New York has contributed to the fund, and the center should be completed in the spring. She’s on the board and very actively involved.”

“The Boston Center for the Arts?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

We had recently made a donation, but I didn’t tell her that.

“What about you?” she asked. “Is it true you are married to the legendary Marty Tauber?”

“Guilty.”

After hearing Amy rank my husband as one of the most eligible ex-bachelors in California, I said, “I’m good, under the circumstances. I’m learning to take each day as it comes.”

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“Not really.”

“Maybe you should climb one of those fabulous trees in Central Park, and the answer will appear.”

“Those days are long over,” I laughed, but I liked that she remembered.

“I know I was a kid back then, and I didn’t understand everything going on, but I know what I saw that summer. We all did.”