Molly was afraid that if she said Gary’s name he’d disappear. She kept herself still. She tried to be detached so she wouldn’t be disappointed if this was just another mirage, another hallucination. Wait, she told herself. See what happens next.
He smiled at her. This hallucination was really good, she thought. The details were so exact, so precise, right down to the small gold flaw in Gary’s left eye, his curly cowlick. There was even the scar on his thumb where he had once cut himself with an X-acto knife.
She couldn’t help herself. She reached for his hand. It was warm. There was a pulse. It was Gary.
“Gary? You’re alive?”
His smile deepened. “You, too.”
“You’re really alive! You’re really here!” She touched his face, his cowlick, his scarred thumb. She had thought and thought about him, had seen his face in her mind a thousand times, but here, before her, he seemed to glow. She was so excited, so happy, she could hardly speak.
“I’ve been here every day. I came here just about all the time.”
“You did! You really did! I haven’t been able to remember. They kept telling me you were here, but I never remembered any of it.” She touched his hair. “I wish there were room in this bed. I wish you
could just get up here with me and hold me. Or better yet, I wish I could get up and come home with you. Right now.”
He laughed. “You don’t know how much I wish that, too.”
“I had a baby, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Is the baby alive?”
His face changed. “Of course he is. He’s great.”
“Otis.” She had a brief flash. Big light eyes looking up at her. His damp mouth against her breast, nursing. Her arms around him. “Where is he?”
“Home.” He hesitated.
“What’s the matter?” She felt a clip of alarm. “You said he was okay, right?”
“Honey—”
“What? Tell me.”
He looked down at the floor and then back at her. “Suzanne is here. She’s watching him.”
“Suzanne?” Molly tried to sit up. “Not my sister Suzanne?” She shook her head.
“I had to call her, Molly. There was no one else.”
Molly was silent for a moment. “I guess I can’t believe she came.” “She came right away. And she’s great with Otis. And he’s crazy about her. And she’s been here every day to see you.”
“She has for real? What’s she like now? What does she look like?” Gary looked uncomfortable. “You can see for yourself. And you look so sleepy. Should I come back?”
“No, no, what if I sleep and then wake up and you’re not here?”
“I’ll stay. You sleep and I’ll stay. I promise.”
“You will? You’ll really stay?”
“Try to keep me away.”
She reached out her hand and took Gary’s. “I love you,” she said.
She shut her eyes. She kept opening them, sneaking peeks, making sure he was still there in the orange chair beside her. He was there, watching her. Every time she saw him afresh, she felt a shiver of pure
delight. “Gary.” As soon as she said his name, he turned his attention to her, he leaned closer, and she drifted into sleep.
A bad dream woke her, fading instantly as she bolted awake.
“Honey—Molly—” Gary was sitting beside her, watching her.
“I’m not supposed to be here! I’m supposed to be home with my baby—with you!”
“You will be soon. I promise.”
“I’m missing everything! I don’t know what Otis looks like anymore! I don’t know what he did when he first came home! I don’t know what his first bath was like! I don’t even know how he is with you, what you two do!” She caught at her breath.
Gary was silent. “We go to the diner a lot.”
“What?” She laughed, swiping at her drippy nose.
“We like the soup.”
Gary stayed beside Molly past visiting hours. Molly heard the nurses ushering people out, hurrying them along. “You can visit tomorrow,” they said, but when the nurses passed by Molly, not one of them so much as raised an eyebrow. They kind of half smiled. They left Gary and Molly alone.
The floor was quieting down. Finally, Gary rose up slowly. “I’ll call you as soon as I get home.”
She watched him leave but as sóon as he was out of the room, she felt terrified. She knew Gary wouldn’t be home yet, but she still wished he would call.
She couldn’t stop thinking about him, wondering where he was right that moment, still in the car, driving a little wildly, singing along to the radio the way the two of them used to do together, stopping to get a quick bite at the diner they used to like? Or was he already back in the house? What was he doing, making up Otis’s bottle or talking with Suzanne ? What was that even like, the three of them together? She tried to imagine Suzanne being good with the baby, tried to imagine Suzanne in her house, and it made her vaguely uncomfortable. What was Suzanne
like? She had asked Gary, but he hadn’t told her. For the first time, it struck her: Why hadn’t he told her?
A half hour later, the phone rang, jolting her. She grabbed for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Someone wants to talk to you,” Gary said, and then suddenly she heard a breathy sigh, a babble.
She sat up straight in bed. Her fingers gripped the receiver. “Otis!” She gasped his name. “It’s Mommy! I love you, I miss you. I wish I could be there!” she cried. “Forgive me. Can you ever forgive me?” She heard him yawn, slow and sweet, and then the phone tumbled and Gary picked it up.
“Well?” he said.
She was sobbing so hard she could hardly speak. “He’s alive.”
“Of course he is. You get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You promise?”
“Try to keep me away.”
She was wiping her nose on the sleeve of her johnny when she suddenly realized Suzanne hadn’t asked to speak to her. Suzanne was right there in her house, and she hadn’t even picked up the phone.
“Molly?”
She blinked awake. She was used to this. Blood tests, transfusions, medications, doctors. “Go away,” she said flatly.
“Molly?” the voice said again, and then she looked up and there, like a shock, was Suzanne.
Suzanne was glowing, pretty, and her black hair was hanging in two thick braids across her chest.
“You look just the same,” Molly said, amazed. “Like time just stopped.”
“No. I don’t. But thanks for saying it.” Suzanne gave her a funny half smile. “Was it okay that I came back? I know things ended kind of crummy for us.”
“Gary said you’re helping out a lot,” Molly said carefully.
Suzanne put her hands in her parka, a bright orange one that Molly suddenly recognized.
“Hey. That’s my parka.”
Suzanne looked down at it as if she were just noticing it for the first time. “I borrowed it. I don’t own anything warm.” Suzanne sat down and leaned forward. She had trouble meeting Molly’s eyes. Molly felt as if a kind of radar had suddenly been turned on, as if she knew something about Suzanne, only she wasn’t sure yet what it was.
“How long can you stay?”
“As long as you guys want.”
Both women were silent and then Suzanne awkwardly cleared her throat. “Hey. You want a Life Saver? I’ve got chocolate.” She dug in her pockets, rummaging around, and then she grinned and lifted out a bright purple pacifier, wagging it in her fingers.
“I keep extras for Otis,” she said. “He likes the round kind. Can you believe it, a baby has pacifier favorites?”
“I don’t know—”
“You should see his taste in music. A little James Brown. A little hip-hop.”
“Hip-hop. I used to sing him the Beatles.”
“Oh, he doesn’t like that now. Now, he goes nuts for rap,” Suzanne smiled. “Wait until you see his personality!”
Molly smiled weakly. She could only remember what carrying him had been like, and she wasn’t sure that counted right now. She could only remember three real days of her son. How the maternity nurses wheeled Otis and her roommate’s baby into her room in a kind of parade, both babies swaddled in blue and rose blankets, tiny caps poised on their heads, and what she remembered most of all was the way the other baby always seemed to be sleeping, his eyes squinched shut, the way Otis’s dark eyes danced, the way he seemed to be laughing, as if this life was a great and wonderful joke, and he was about to add to the mischief. The other baby woke up with a wail, and Otis would be looking around, in a mood so good, it was contagious. “That baby, he’s some firecracker,” one of the maternity nurses
said to Molly, “he’s got himself an attitude,” and Molly had laughed. “I remember he was fantastic,” Molly said to Suzanne, but Suzanne shook her head.
“I mean now, Molly. Wait until you see how big he is. Every day he looks like he’s different. He’s learning everything. We play all these games. Find my nose. Bat the toys. He makes a sound and I make it back.” Suzanne grew more animated. “Gary and I sing to him all the time. You should see how nuts he goes!”
“Gary’s wonderful, isn’t he?”
“Sure,” Suzanne looked down at the floor, but not before Molly saw her sister flush.
“He said you two were getting along.”
“Well, you know, we have to. We share the same house. We both look after Otis.”
Something about the way Suzanne was talking bothered Molly. The tone in Suzanne’s voice nipped and buzzed at Molly like a small insect. She tried to shake it off. This was Suzanne, after all, Suzanne who had run away with the handsomest, wildest boy in school, Suzanne who had never wanted anything Molly had ever had. Suzanne was quiet. She wasn’t looking at Molly. Outside Molly could hear the squeaky wheels of a gurney, some nurses joking and laughing. “He’s so cute for a resident,” one said.
“Was it okay that I came back?” Suzanne repeated.
“I never thought you would.”
Suzanne shrugged.
“Gary said you’re really helping. You can take off your jacket, you know. Stay a while,” Molly said, and then Suzanne did, and Molly saw the sweater Suzanne was wearing.
“That’s Gary’s.”
Suzanne looked slowly down at the sweater. “God, just like the jacket. Isn’t that funny. I just grabbed whatever was there.” Suzanne laughed nervously. “I’m not used to this cold. Especially at night. As soon as Gary leaves, I crank the heat up.”
“What are you talking about? Gary’s not there at night?”
“Well, he’s not exactly a day watchman.”
“A what?”
“Oh,” said Suzanne, flustered. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Molly looked at Suzanne, astonished. “What’s going on here?”
“What do you mean what’s going on? Nothing—I mean—look—Gary will tell you.”
“No. You’re here. You tell me.”
Suzanne chewed on her lip. “Gary kind of got fired. Right after you got sick. Luckily, one of the neighbors got him this job.”
“Brian fired him?”
“I wasn’t there, I don’t know the whole story.” Suzanne brightened. “But, Molly, it’s been working out. He gets to be with you all day, it’s not too taxing, it’s money under the table. And with me working, too, we’re doing just fine.”
“You’re working?”
“I’m just doing hair in the house—and Otis is right there beside me. Unless he’s napping.”
Molly looked stupefied.
“I thought you knew that, too.”
“I’m calling Gary.” Molly reached for the phone. The line rang and rang.
“He won’t be there,” Suzanne said patiently. “He had to take the car in before he went to work.”
Molly slowly lowered her hand. “I knew that,” she said defensively. “He told me that about the car.”
“He probably didn’t tell you about the job because he just didn’t want to worry you. That’s all it probably is.”
Suzanne kept shifting in her seat. Molly couldn’t stop thinking about Gary having lost his job and not telling her. It wasn’t an important thing about the car, but still, she and Gary used to tell each other everything, no matter how stupid or insignificant. She couldn’t help thinking: If he had kept this from her, what else wasn’t he telling her?
“Suzanne shouldn’t have told you—”
Gary was sitting beside her the next morning, trying to explain.
“We never kept secrets from each other,” Molly accused.
“It wasn’t a secret! I just don’t want you to worry. I was going to tell you—”
“When?”
“When you were better.”
“Aren’t I better? I’m better now.”
“Of course you are.” He wouldn’t look at her, and it made her chilled.
“What else aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing! You know everything!”
“I know nothing! I have no way of knowing what’s going on! I’m stuck in here!”
He reached over and took her hand and when she tried to wrench it away, he held it tighter. “It’s not a big deal,” he insisted, but Molly shook her head.
“Why does Suzanne know things I don’t?” Molly asked.
That night, Molly lay in bed awake and terrified. She heard the nurses gossiping, the occasional cry of a patient. She reached for the phone to call Gary. It was so late, she’d probably wake him. His voice would be drowsy with sleep, but they could talk, the way they used to when she couldn’t sleep. She remembered once she was tossing and turning, he had dragged her out of bed and made her come into the kitchen. He had made popcorn and put on an old movie. “If you’re going to be up, you might as well have a good time,” he had laughed, and ten minutes into the movie, she had fallen soundly asleep against him.
The phone rang and rang. Where could he be at this hour on a weekend? And where was Suzanne? The machine suddenly turned on, and there was Suzanne’s voice, jarring her, lilting, as if Suzanne were in a good mood and couldn’t wait to talk to whomever might be calling. “Hi, please leave a message for Gary, Suzanne, Otis, or Molly at the beep.” Molly hung up the phone. Suzanne was speaking on her machine. Suzanne’s name was on her machine. And Molly’s name was last.
She told herself she was being stupid. Of course Suzanne’s name was there. She was working out of the house. Clients might call her, it was only businesslike. And what difference, really, did it make that Suzanne was saying the message? Gary was doing enough without worrying about a message. If it bothered her so much, she could always ask him to change it, to put his own voice to it. To ask Suzanne to get her own private line.
Molly lay in bed watching the open door, the occasional nurse whisking by. She wasn’t tired. She had woken up, but to a whole different world, a place where her husband kept things from her, her sister cut hair in her kitchen, and her own baby was a stranger. And she had no idea what to do about any of it.
Now that Molly was awake, more and more people came by. Orderlies bringing her water leaned against her bed to watch her TV. Nurses picked up the photos of Otis Gary had brought in and swooned over him. “Those eyes! You must be in heaven!” they told Molly. They said Otis looked like Gary. They said he favored Molly. Sometimes they said he looked like neither one of them, and no matter what the nurses said, no matter how expectantly they looked at Molly, Molly didn’t know what to say to any of them.
“You’re amazing,” one of the day nurses told her. “You fought so hard to get back to your son.”
Molly was struck silent. She didn’t feel as if she had fought to get back to Otis. It had just happened,
The nurse adjusted Molly’s IV, staring at it critically. She flicked the tubing with a nail and then frowned and flicked at it again. “Well, when he’s a teenager and starts to act up, you can tell him, ‘Hey, buster, I went through hell for you, now you’d better just behave if you know what’s good for you.’”
Molly looked at the nurse, shocked. “I would never tell him that! This isn’t his fault!”
The nurse laughed and dropped the IV tube. “Ah, spoken like a true mother!”
But Molly didn’t feel like a mother, true or otherwise. She didn’t feel any connection to this Otis. The baby she felt a part of had been the one she had carried inside of her.
She had known everything about Otis back then. How a sweet biscuit could make him kick, how he preferred to bunch up on her left side, how orange juice made him hiccup so long and hard she felt as if he were percolating inside her belly. She didn’t know anything about this baby now. She had heard other mothers say they could pick out their babies from two rooms away just by their scent, just by the sound of their cries, but Molly couldn’t have picked Otis out if he was right there in front of her, banked by two other babies.
“I have to see my baby,” she told Karen when she came by on rounds.
Karen frowned, “Molly, we’ve been through this before. I still don’t think that’ll be great for the baby. There’s too much infection on this floor. Let his immune system get a little stronger. Wait a bit.”
“What, two years? Three? When he’s getting married?”
Karen smiled. “Atta girl, keep up that sense of humor.”
But Molly didn’t think anything was funny. If Karen didn’t think it was a good idea, she’d just find a doctor who did. She lay in a kind of wait in her bed, and when Dr. Price strode in, Molly cornered him.
“It’ll exhaust you and you need all your strength,” Dr. Price said.
“But I’m stronger now.”
He lifted the sheets and gently prodded Molly’s belly. He pulled the sheets down again. “Kids are astonishingly resilient. You’d do best not to worry.”
She thought of Suzanne hoisting Otis high in the air, the two of them laughing. She thought of Otis grabbing on to Suzanne’s long hair. And then she thought of Suzanne and Gary, taking Otis to the park the way Suzanne said they did, sitting on the grass on a blanket so
that anyone walking by might think they were a family. “Let me see my son,” she said.
“I’ll see you later this evening,” he said.
Each day, they tried to get her to do a little more. A therapist came in and made Molly stand, which made Molly so dizzy she was sure she was going to throw up. They showed her exercises she could do in bed: flexing her feet, making arm circles. Not too much for fear she might hemorrhage, not too little or she’d never get strong. “A devil’s bargain,” Molly groused. And they began to let her eat. First Jell-O, rationing it out to her a teaspoon at a time, and then a list of soft, bland foods that Molly considered as carefully as if it were a fourstar menu. Never had Jell-O tasted more delicious. She swore the green had a different taste than the yellow. Never had oatmeal seemed like such a feast.
No matter what she ordered, they brought her something different. She checked off cereal and they brought her French toast. She checked off soup and they brought her steak. “I didn’t order this!” she told the woman bringing the food. “I’m supposed to have bland food!”
The woman looked at her wearily. “You’re not going to make me argue with the kitchen, are you?” she asked Molly. “You do that, and by the time I get you your breakfast it’ll be dinnertime. Why don’t you just save us all some trouble and eat what’s there?”
It became a kind of joke, and she began to have Gary bring her food so they could eat together. She made requests, hoping he’d get what she wanted, trying to gauge how far he’d go for her. Soup from the Kiev. Chinese cold noodles from Chinatown. He always came, and after two bites, her appetite was gone. “You have the rest,” she told him. The one time she asked Suzanne to bring her plain pasta, Suzanne came with a tuna sandwich, greasy with mayonnaise, and after that Molly never asked her to bring anything again.
Later, when Dr. Price came by, he had a strange secretive look playing about his face. “What?” she said. She could sit up now, like an expert.
“I see you’re eating. Not much, but you’re still eating. And your blood levels are getting a bit better.”
Molly looked at him, waiting.
“Does that mean I can go home?”
“Well, no, of course not. Not by a long shot—” he admitted.
“So what does it mean?”
He grinned again, the first real smile she had seen on him. “It means you can see your son.”
Molly started. “Are you kidding?”
“You have to be in a wheelchair. It’s just in the solarium and just for a short time. I discussed this with Karen and the other doctors and we all think it might be good for your state of mind. And good for the baby.”
As soon as Dr. Price left, Molly started crying. A new nurse walked into the room, young and coltish, carrying a thermometer, and she looked nervous when she saw Molly weeping.
“What’s the matter?”
“Please, will you buy me makeup?”
“What?” The nurse stood beside Molly.
“My son is coming. Please, I haven’t seen him in three months. I have to look good. I need mascara. Brown eye shadow, some sort of glossy lipstick in a brownish red. Blush. A mirror. And—” Molly sobbed. “Gold hoop earrings. Tiny ones.”
The morning Molly was to see Otis, she woke at four. She grabbed her bag of cosmetics and spread them across the sheet. She brushed her hair, putting it up and then taking it down. She put on the gold hoops, and struggled with the makeup, squinting critically at herself in the hand mirror. Her skin looked ashy to her. Her lips were chapped and her eyes seemed like pin dots in her face. She did the best she
could, but she felt as if she were readying herself for a blind date, for a meeting with someone everyone had told her about and all she could think of was, What if he doesn’t like me? What if I make a bad first impression? She swept the makeup back into the bag and into a drawer. She waited. her hands tensely folded.
It seemed like years before a nurse came to get her, pushing a wheelchair, smiling broadly at her. “Hey, you look good. Your color’s better. The meds must be doing their job.”
“It’s Maybelline,” Molly said, and the nurse laughed.
She wheeled Molly lazily toward the solarium, the IV pole squeaking alongside her. Molly was so tense, she wanted to scream at her to hurry, hurry. She couldn’t wait. “Here we go,” the nurse said, wheeling her into the room. “Not too long now.”
The solarium was a misnomer. Molly didn’t know what she expected, but the word made her think of green plants and new light spread out like a fresh summer sheet and gleaming wood floors. Instead, the solarium was a small, boxy room with a blue linoleum floor and orange padded chairs. It was filled with magazines and a card table and not a single plant. There was a woman in a red suit whispering to a man in a hospital gown. There was an elderly woman with her eyes shut. And there in the corner was Gary, and next to him, sitting close, was Suzanne, rocking a baby who seemed three times the size of the one Molly remembered. She stared at the baby, trying to find something familiar. He had hair now, dark like Gary’s. She knew his eyes, she thought. And maybe his mouth. But would she have known him if he wasn’t on Suzanne’s lap?
Suzanne bent down, whispering something to Otis, looking up at Molly with a look that made Molly suddenly scared: guilt.
“Hey, look who’s here!” Suzanne said to Otis. Otis stared at Molly.
Gary picked up the baby and gently settled him in Molly’s lap. Otis fussed. He stiffened, arching his back.
Suzanne crouched down beside Molly, repositioning Otis. Otis’s hands clung to Suzanne.
“Say Mommy,” Suzanne urged Otis, who said nothing.
Otis looked at Suzanne. She tickled his chin, making him shut his eyes in pleasure.
“He loves this,” Suzanne announced. She was talking really fast. She grabbed the baby’s little finger. “He likes this, too.”
“And stuffed animals,” Gary said. “Oh, I think he wants his pacifier.” He reached for the baby bag, just as Suzanne did, brushing her hand, jolting his back as if she had burned him. Molly stared from one to the other. Gary and Suzanne both seemed uncomfortable. They were talking without looking at each other. Suzanne rummaged in the bag and popped a blue pacifier in Otis’s mouth, and when she sat back down, she angled her body toward Gary. Gary bolted up from the couch. Molly felt a prickling of fear. What was going on here? “Gary?” Molly said, and then Otis spat out the pacifier and began to wail.
“I’ll take him—” Suzanne said, but Molly pulled back.
“No. Leave him be,” Molly said.
“Let me just get him to stop and then I’ll hand him right back—”
“No.” Otis wailed louder. Molly felt desperate.
“Oh, not like that—” Suzanne said, and Molly swiveled her body away from her sister.
“I can do this,” Molly said sharply. “I can comfort my own baby.”
Suzanne put her hands up and took a step back. “Be my guest.”
Molly tried to rock him, but it made Otis cry louder. He flailed against Molly. “What’s wrong with him?” Molly cried. “Is he wet?”
“He just wants a hug.” Suzanne picked Otis up from her arms, and Otis instantly calmed down. “You get to know these things by instinct,” Suzanne said.
They didn’t stay very long after that. A nurse came to wheel Molly back to her room, letting her linger at the elevator. “Say bye-bye.” Gary lifted up Otis’s hand and waved it. The baby blinked at her. His lower lip flopped open. He’s trying to tell me something, she thought, and before she could figure it out, the elevator door opened and the last thing she saw before the door closed were Otis’s dark eyes, staring out at her.
She fell asleep almost as soon as she was back in bed. She heard a voice and looked up, trying to rouse, and there was Dr. Price shaking his head at her. “It was too much for you,” he said, and then before she could argue with him, she fell asleep again.