That Friday night I went back out into the world. The weight finally began to lift. The sharp, cool night air pumping through my lungs as we ran down the steps with a bar full of enraged Mexican construction workers a half flight behind us was the jolt I needed. My heart beat fast; I was alive again.
Lonnie wasn’t the only person whose life I’d dropped out of. It had been weeks since I’d last seen or talked to Marsha, maybe the longest time that had passed in the four years we’ve been together. It wasn’t entirely my doing, though. The last few months had been as horrible for her as they were numb for me, and the last few times we saw each other, we were both strained and awkward.
You’d think a doctor—especially one who cuts up dead people for a living—would have been prepared for the rigors of pregnancy, but apparently that’s something you simply can’t anticipate. I’d been moved to tears the morning her pregnancy test came back positive. In the middle of all the crap I’d been through, the thought that there could still be new life out there was powerful.
I imagined Marsha blooming like a rose, filled with an inner glow, all those gushy warm and fuzzy images from television commercials. I wanted to marry her immediately, to move in and start painting the baby’s room. Next stop: the white picket fence in the burbs and a big shaggy dog and barbecues on Saturdays with the kids romping in the backyard.
Yeah, right.… The first thing Dr. Marsha Helms did was instruct me to disabuse myself of any notions in that direction. Marriage was not in the cards for her, love, yes, participatory parenting, yes. But not marriage. She’d been independent, alone, and in control all her adult life and she sure as hell wasn’t about to change that now.
The rosy glow didn’t happen either. Instead of slowly blossoming into Botticellian bloom, my darling significant other immediately lost five pounds, developed circles the color of eggplant under her eyes, began throwing up everything that went past her lips, and periodically turned into the ice queen from hell. I’d heard dark murmurings of the hormonal roller coaster that pregnant women climbed onto, those same primordial tales Neanderthal men must have grunted to one another over a smoldering fire after they’d been tossed out of the cave.
So far, I’d managed to avoid being thrown out of anybody’s cave. But there had been pained silences between us after angry outbursts, moments of forced conviviality, long stretches of awkward small talk. I got the sense that there was something eating away at her, something more than just a fetus.
After we got Hector downtown, Lonnie gave me my hundred bucks in cash, then dropped me off at the junkyard to pick up my car. I drove back to my apartment around seven-thirty, thought what the hell, and dialed her number.
Marsha’s phone rang four times and the answering machine picked up, but before the outgoing message ended, I heard the clicking noise as she picked up the phone.
“Hold on,” she said loudly, over the tape. I could hear her fumbling with the answering machine as she found the switch to turn it off.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice hassled, stressed.
“Hi,” I said.
A beat or two of silence followed, then her voice, more subdued now: “Oh, hi.”
“How are you?”
“Okay.” Another pause. “You?”
“Strangely enough,” I said, “I’m doing okay. Haven’t talked to you in a while. Just thought I’d call and catch up.”
“It’s, uh … it’s good to hear your voice, Harry.”
“Yours, too. How’re you feeling these days? I mean, the baby and all.”
“Tired, mostly. I just got in from work. Just as the phone rang, in fact.”
“It’s late,” I said. “I thought you were going to cut back.”
“It’s been a rough week. Dr. Henry’s been out of town at a conference and we seem to have a sudden uptick in business.”
Dr. Henry Krohlmeyer had been chief medical examiner in Nashville for as long as anyone could remember. Brilliant, but eccentric and a bit challenged in the people-skills department, he was Marsha’s mentor and hero.
“Not only that, Joyce Harrison quit.”
“Joyce Harrison?”
“Yeah, the second assistant examiner.”
“Oh, I remember. Jeez, she’s only been there about six months, right?”
“Not even that long.”
“How come she quit?”
“It’s a long story. Too long to go into now.”
“So there’s just you and Doc Henry?”
“You got it.” I heard her rustling something on the counter next to the phone.
“Marsha, that’s too much. Don’t you think you should—”
“I’m all right,” she interrupted. “Don’t hover.”
I gritted my teeth. “I wasn’t hovering, Marsha. I’m just concerned.”
She sighed into the phone. “I’m sorry, babe. I’m just tired. I’ve got to get off my feet.”
“Have you had dinner?” I asked.
“No, but I’m way too tired to go out.”
“Look, I went back to work, made a few bucks today.”
Her voice perked up. “You did?”
“Yeah.” I cradled the phone in my neck and nervously spun the five twenties into a roll. Eighty-something of it was owed to BellSouth first thing Monday morning. A guy’s gotta eat, though, right?
“I decided it was time I got out of this funk,” I continued. “I went into the office this morning, balanced the books, figured out how much trouble I was in, then put together the beginnings of a plan.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Called Lonnie, picked up a little work this evening.”
“Oh.” Her voice dropped. “Lonnie. Another repo job, huh?”
“Not this time. Helped a guy grab a bail jumper.”
“You know, you could make a decent living at this if you’d just give it a chance and stop messing around with—”
“I know, I know.” It was my turn to interrupt. “I’ve been in a slump lately, but it’s over. Why don’t I pick up some dinner, bring it by your place.”
“I’m awful tired, Harry.”
I held the phone away from my ear for a second or two, thinking. Finally, I just said it.
“Look, we need to talk. I don’t know what’s going on with us anymore, but I don’t like it. Let me get some takeout or something, bring it over. We’ll spend a little time together. Catch up, reconnect. No strings attached, okay?”
She was silent for a moment
“C’mon, babe,” I said. “I want to see if you’re starting to show.”
She snorted a laugh into the phone. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m showing. And it’s not a pretty sight.”
“Why don’t you let me make that call?”
She was silent for a moment, then sighed again. “No MSG, okay?”
I skittered down the rickety metal steps from my second-floor apartment and jumped in the car. As I passed her back door, I saw that Mrs. Hawkins, my seventysomething landlady, had already turned the lights out on the first floor. I hadn’t seen her except in passing for several weeks now and I’d noticed that she seemed to be retiring earlier and earlier these days. She’d not been out as much lately either. When I first met her and became her tenant nearly five years ago, she always had a project going—gardening, painting, redecorating. Nowadays, whenever I passed her window, I noticed she was mostly settled into an easy chair, staring at a television that—with her near total deafness—she almost certainly couldn’t hear.
Oh, hell, I thought, as I pumped the accelerator and hoped the old Mustang would start, another person to catch up with.
The Friday-night traffic on Gallatin Road was amazingly light. The air was thick and heavy with the cold, the kind of late winter wet Nashville chill that eats through you so hard you think your pilot light’s gone out The harsh streetlights reflected off the thin sheen of moisture on the asphalt in blinding sparkles. I cranked the heat up, but it didn’t help much.
When you’re looking for hot, cheap, and good, there’s only one place in this part of town that’ll do. I pulled into the parking lot of Lee’s Szechuan Palace on Gallatin Road, just across the street from the old Earl Scheib Body Shop. Mr. and Mrs. Lee opened their restaurant probably ten or twelve years ago and had turned it into one of the great hidden treasures in East Nashville. That was the problem; as a hidden treasure it had made them enough to live on and educate Mary, their daughter, but not enough to hire help and avoid the seventy-hour weeks that would probably wind up killing them.
The dinner rush was over by the time I pulled into the parking lot. Mrs. Lee was wiping down tables as her husband leaned into the opening between the kitchen and the counter, cigarette hanging from his lips, exhaustion on his face. There were only a couple of tables occupied.
Mrs. Lee spotted me coming up the walk and scowled. I grinned back at her and nodded my head as I pushed the heavy plate-glass door open.
“Thought you moved away,” she snapped. It was the first time I’d seen her in a month, maybe longer.
“Just laying low,” I said. “Too late to grab a couple of takeouts?”
She walked past me, rolling up the wet counter cloth into a tight bundle. “Where you been, Harry? Mary ask about you alla time.”
Mary Lee was my buddy, a second-semester freshman at Harvard, a math whiz, and the only woman who ever made me wish I were young again.
I leaned against the counter as Mrs. Lee walked behind it. Loose strands of salt-and-pepper hair hung down her forehead almost to the great purple circles under her eyes. Mr. Lee smiled, sort of, and nodded his head to me. Mr. Lee rarely spoke, and when he did, it was not English—at least not any English I could understand.
“Sorry I haven’t been by,” I said. “I had kind of a rough couple of months. How’s Mary?”
Mrs. Lee came about as close to cracking a smile as I’d ever seen. “She make dean’s list her first semester. Bring home all A’s at Christmas.”
She grabbed a pad and a worn Bic pen. “She call last night upset. Make a B-plus on a test. You think a whole world fall in.”
I smiled. “She’s just like her mom,” I said. “Pushing herself too hard.”
Mrs. Lee held up the pad, pen poised. “That not a problem you have, Harry. What you want tonight?”
“I’m taking a late dinner over to Marsha’s. Better give me one hot, one regular.” I scanned the menu. “Kung pao beef, cashew chicken. That way I’ve got all the bases covered. Oh, and no MSG.”
Mrs. Lee’s face torqued into a scowl. “You insult me, Harry. We not use MSG heah!”
“Sorry,” I said as she scribbled some Chinese on the pad, ripped off the ticket, and handed it to Mr. Lee with a burst of Chinese. She turned back and punched up the bill on the cash register as I pulled a twenty out of my pocket.
“How Doctah Mahsha doing?” she asked.
“Tired, but I think she’s okay.”
“How fah along is she?” I handed her the bill.
“About four months, I think.”
“Ah,” Mrs. Lee said. “Worst of moaning sickness ovah. She start to feel bettah for a while, then much, much worse.”
She shook her head as she handed me my change. “Harry, you ought marry dat girl.”
I held out my hands, palms forward, automatically going into defensive mode. “Hey, I asked her! She doesn’t want to get married. Why? Beats me.…”
Mr. Lee put two Styrofoam boxes in the window and barked something to his wife. She turned, grabbed the boxes, slid them onto the counter.
“Modahn women,” she muttered, her voice lowering both in tone and volume. “Not undahstand.… modahn women.”
Modahn women. To have admitted to Mrs. Lee that I also didn’t understand what was going on would have been an understatement of classically clichéd proportions.
The aroma of Chinese food filled the car as I started the trek out to Green Hills, the fashionable, upscale part of town where Marsha’d bought a six-figure condo back before the real-estate boom started. No telling what it was worth now.
I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit—at least to myself—that Marsha’s success was part of her appeal. I’d always been drawn to intelligent, ambitious women. And as the circumstances in my own professional life continued to deteriorate, there was part of me that wanted to say to her: Let me be house-hubby, please! I can change diapers, dust away the bunnies, and have dinner ready by six as good as the next guy!
Why not? I’d been wearied by my own struggles of the past few years. I’d had some good times and some bad times, but all in all, I’d trade it in a New York minute to be a kept man. It’s not that I wasn’t offering anything in return. It seemed logical to me that having a parent at home was better than paying a nanny or dropping the kid off at daycare, to be cared for by strangers and infected by a lot of other snotty-nosed little curtain crawlers.
Yeah, I thought as I pulled off I-440 onto Hillsboro Road, we need to talk. I had some rights here, didn’t I? I wasn’t just the sperm donor. I was the father of something that was growing inside a woman whom I still, despite all our difficulty of the past few months, very much loved. Surely she could see that. If I just made my case to her in the right way, she’d understand. She’d have to.
I pulled into the condo development and drove through the parking lot. There was an empty space next to Marsha’s black Porsche, the one with her vanity plate: DED FLKS.
I pulled the paper bag with the two Styrofoam boxes off the floor and locked the car behind me. I noticed for the first time a FOR SALE sign on the dashboard of the Porsche. I stared a moment, shocked. She loves that car; it was her one big yuppie indulgence.
“The times, they are a-changin’,” I whispered. I hit the walk and was at her door in a few steps. I rang the buzzer and stepped back. Through the curtained window inset in the door, I saw her form coming closer.
The door handle clicked and shook as she unlocked it. Then the door opened and there, backlit by the hallway light, was the tall figure of Dr. Marsha Helms, the woman with whom I’d had an interior mental argument all the way from East Nashville, the woman I hoped to convince to spend the rest of her life with me.
Only problem was, I hardly recognized her.