The pink bull’s-eye appears on the early pregnancy detector wand just six days after Cat is fired, one day after she files an application for benefits at the Unemployment Office, and two hours before her appointment to show her portfolio to Marshall Korn at Exit Ramp. The dot appears instantly, confirming what her swollen breasts have suggested for days. She is pregnant. Again. Not six months after the first time — demonstrating her complete irresponsibility as a human being. She had meant to see her gynecologist and get her diaphragm replaced. She really should have. She will have to explain to Teddy why she didn’t, and wonders now if she unconsciously-deliberately did not take care of that.... No! She shakes herself free of guilt and doubt. She knew this could happen, because it happened once before. She allowed this to happen. It was irresponsible of her, and she will take the blame. But she will also admit to herself and anyone who asks that she wants this baby, even if she shouldn’t want it, and she will have this baby, even if technically her life is not in order. Her decision is made before the pink dot on the pregnancy test has completely darkened. This time, Teddy will have to make his own decision, by himself.
She wraps up all the test paraphernalia in the brown paper bag it came in, and buries it deep in the bathroom garbage can where Teddy will never see it. She will tell him when she’s ready, face to face, and take whatever comes.
She lowers the toilet seat, sits down and thinks. Some women say they can feel the prick of conception as it happens, that within minutes they know they are pregnant. Not Cat. But searching back a few weeks, she thinks she can pinpoint the night it happened.
The way it looks, Lucie Gold Foster had the great good fortune and determination to plunge into life on a warm night in early September. Teddy had just finished a big commission for ArtWorld magazine, an article on post-pop ultra-minimalist neo-geo painting and its hyper-expressionist roots, and he decided to use his set of keys to greet Cat at her place with a bottle of celebration champagne. When she walked through the door from work, he aimed the bottle above her head and let the cork fly.
“I finished my article today!”
“Congratulations.”
“That’s three thousand dollars in the bank.”
He poured the foaming champagne into two wine glasses he had set on the table. Cat kissed him and he squeezed her into a big hug, rocking her back and forth.
“I’m starving,” she said. “I have to eat something first.”
“Drink one glass.” He smiled his best seductive smile and his blue eyes went steamy. “I love you.” His mouth was warm on her neck, which she craned so he could kiss more of her. His kisses were lusciously slow and soft and she could taste the champagne on his tongue. Tiny bubbles flitted through her brain and Teddy touching her, dancing her across the floor, intoxicated her completely.
They moved to the bed. Hovering over her, Teddy unbuttoned her blouse. His eyes were smiling and his mouth was soft and relaxed. She knew the look, when he was in a loving mood, and it thrilled her as much as it always had. They undressed each other slowly. It was like a first night together, but better, because they knew each other’s contours so well.
Cat decides it happened that night. It was the night they began to discuss the idea of Teddy moving back in. This would be the story she would tell Lucie, when she grew up: that her parents had separated long enough to know how much they needed each other, and on a night when everything was wonderful they created her out of love.
Cat gathers her portfolio, filled with Legends cartoons and comic strips, and makes the short walk over to Exit Ramp. Though it is only nine blocks away, every step feels like a month, every block a year. In this one day, her life could change forever. She is pregnant. She did not destroy her uterus with the abortion. She will not be punished for the rest of her life. She will not be sentenced to solitude forever. She will not starve to death without a job. Maybe she won’t even die undiscovered.
When she pulls open the glass front door to the gallery, a little bell dings above her head. A pretty young woman seated behind a reception counter — a curved, comma-like construction — looks up and doesn’t smile. She notices Cat with the apparent assumption that she has come to look at art, until she spots the portfolio.
“Can I help you?” the woman says with the defensive superiority of an art world professional dreading the bad work of yet another aspirant.
“I have an appointment with Marshall Korn.”
“Oh.” Now the young woman smiles. “I’ll let him know you’re here.” She disappears behind a wall of glass blocks and Cat takes the opportunity to look at the current show. The front room is all Mary Pini and in the back she sees a few Art Spiegelmans. Excellent company... if they’ll have her.
“Hello!”
She turns around. Marshall Korn is tall, with a halo of brown hair around a bald spot on the top of his head. His skin is mocha and he has striking brown eyes the shape of almonds. She shifts her portfolio to her left hand so she can shake his with her right.
“I appreciate your taking the time so late in the process,” she says.
“It’s nothing. Shit happens, right? Come on, let’s take a look at what you got.” He walks around the glass block wall and stands by a big table. Against the opposite wall is a desk, much nicer and more organized than Isabel’s, Cat notes. She lays her portfolio case on the table, unzips it and splays it wide. One by one, she shows him her cartoons. He observes each one thoughtfully, without revealing a glimmer of reaction. When she is finished, he asks her to go through them again.
This time he stops her frequently and laughs when something’s funny, asks her questions, admires a line. When they reach the end again, he says, “You’ve got a very strange and quirky sense of humor. It’s dark, but what a bite.”
After an anxious moment of uncertainty, she recognizes the compliment. “Thanks.”
“Can you leave this here for a week or so? We have a committee.”
“No problem,” Cat says. “My address and phone number are taped inside the portfolio.”
“I know where to find you, then.” He smiles, and tags on a little chuckle. “Interesting stuff.”
They shake hands and she leaves. Solitary but not alone because Lucie is splitting away inside her body. Unemployed but not useless. Free for the rest of the day but not without direction. “Interesting,” he had said. Not insipid or self-involved or unaccomplished. Interesting.
Word arrives a week later that she has been accepted into the show at Exit Ramp. To celebrate, Teddy takes her out to dinner at one of the nicer local res taurants. The food here is especially good, and normally she would relish the treat while obsessing over her amazing fortune — her first big break — and plotting and planning her cartooning future, but she can think of nothing but the fact that she is pregnant and he doesn’t know. She has come to realize that in keeping the truth from him, she is failing the litmus test — honesty — she herself had set for the revival of their relationship. She has also come to realize that, despite her initial bravado, she is terrified of losing him again. She needs to feel strong when she tells him because there will be no turning back. And for this strength she considers enlisting none other than her unborn child. She could wait until Lucie is big enough to resemble a human being, pull out her copy of Our Bodies Our Selves, locate the page with the picture of the fetus tucked cozily in its mother’s womb and tell Teddy, “This is how big Lucie is now.” He’d look at the picture and see a person as tiny as a thimble, sucking her thumb.... No, Cat decides, splitting a breadstick in half as Teddy smiles at her across the candlelight, she won’t do that. It would be a cheap shot, worse than that idiot-protestor outside the abortion clinic last April, confusing murder with choice. “I’ve made a decision,” she’ll calmly explain to him (as soon as she can muster the courage), “a choice I am going to live with. I’ll accept whatever choice you make for yourself. So let’s just take it from there.”
A few days later, Cat receives a call from Leo Libbon, one of Rocky’s brothers, asking her to return to work for a few more days. He needs help sorting through his sister’s business records so they can be stored indefinitely in the basement of their parents’ house in Brooklyn. Cat hesitates a moment. She had thought she would never go back; she certainly has no desire to.
“You’ll be paid, of course,” Leo says.
“It’s not that.”
“If you could come, it would be a tremendous help. I already packed up the household things with Annie, lovely woman, but we didn’t have a clue about what to do with the office. There are so many papers lying around. Rocky won’t be there, by the way.”
That is really what Cat wanted to hear. “Where is she now?”
“Upstate, in a private psychiatric institution. Very posh.” There is a hint of amusement in Leo’s tone.
“Is Nathan there too?”
“No-o-o-o. He’s in his own loony bin in New Jersey, not so fancy but decent. Nath doesn’t require the same fineries, and I guess Mom and Dad didn’t want them in the same state.” Leo’s amusement ripens into a chuckle, which Cat shares. She likes the sound of this brother.
“I can go tomorrow,” she says.
“Great. But she changed the locks so I’ll leave a set of keys for you with the doorman. Give me a call when you plan on going over and I’ll meet you there.”
“Where are Annie and Parker?”
“Annie retired, and was she happy about that! She went to stay with her sister in the Berkshires. Parker’s under the dubious auspices of my mother. We all had Sunday dinner yesterday. Sweet kid, but lonesome, like a poor little rich kid, know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I do. It must have been hard for him to say goodbye to Annie. Was there any chance she would stay?”
“I think she would have if we’d pressed her. My mother was set against it, though,” Leo says. “She wants to raise him herself.”
The penthouse has an awful empty ghostly feeling and Cat can’t wait to get the packing over with. She misses Annie; it doesn’t feel right here without her. And she misses Parker’s sweet after-school visits when hours of office work could be softened by play. The one person she doesn’t miss is “Rocky the rocket,” as Charlie Webb once called her. Well, that was the understatement of the century. Cat wonders if, a year ago, she was one of the last people alive to still think of the great Rocky Love as a hero. Now she can’t imagine why she did. Rocky’s time has passed, and what’s left of her is a chimera, a bubble that pops on first touch. That, and maybe Cat just grew up enough in a year to recognize that the complexities of being a woman cannot be solved by mere hopefulness, excitement or sloganism. She will not give up on feminism; she will reinvent it, differently, to suit herself, using cartoons as her medium and voice. She will take up the challenge to have it all, family and work, and see how it goes. But she won’t rely on outsized heroes; if she wants a hero, she’ll draw her own.
She moves through her old office to a desk that has devolved to chaos. There is a lot to be done. She begins by sorting through the piles on her desk. From time to time she glances at the picture window and is captivated by the brilliant sky, blue and puffed with clouds, and the colorful treetops of Central Park. It has been a view of mixed emotions, a year of passages, and already she feels nostalgia for the exquisiteness of the view she will never see again, not from exactly this perspective.
Less than an hour into it, the doorbell rings. Leo, no doubt. She goes to the front door, looks through the peephole and sees a thin man with gray-blond hair, miniaturized by the convex coin of glass. He’s wearing a red and blue tropical shirt, baggy Bermuda shorts, black sunglasses and bright white hightop sneakers.
She figures he’s somewhere in his forties, based on what she knows from the memoirs. Other than Nathan, she has never met any of Rocky’s family in person.
She unchains the door and opens it. “Hi, I’m Cat.”
“I figured as much.” He shakes her hand and smiles warmly. He seems different from Rocky and Nathan, more balanced and grounded. Nicer.
“Want some coffee?” she asks.
“I’m off the stuff, but thanks.”
“Well, I already got started in the office.”
“Super,” he says. “I’m here to help. Do we need more boxes in there?”
“We do.”
He leads her to the section of living room wall where flattened cardboard boxes are stacked. “We bought a ton of these things. The movers said they’d buy back whatever we don’t use.” He grabs a stack and they go down the hall to the office.
“I’ve always gone searching for boxes when I moved,” Cat says. “Nasty roachy boxes from deli basements.”
“Well, money breeds all kinds of conveniences, doesn’t it?” He drops the boxes in a heap on the office floor and turns toward the window. “What a spectacular view.”
“That’s one thing I’d like to take with me.”
“I had realtors over here all last week, and this view about doubles the price of this place.”
“Your sister is a successful woman.”
“Was. Let’s face it.” He claps his hands together. “Shall we get started?”
“I thought I’d pack up the files and label them, you know, for posterity.”
“She’d love that — posterity.” His laugh is a quick crescendo. “I’ll build the boxes and then you can give me another job to do, how about that?”
“Sounds good.”
The afternoon drifts by. Leo’s company is comforting, and as they work they talk, gradually spilling out their stories. He tells her things about himself that she already knows from Rocky’s memoirs, as well as things she couldn’t have known, daily trivia about his life with his boyfriend Rich. They talk and talk, pack files, seal and label boxes. In the late afternoon they order in Chinese food and eat together at the dining room table.
Cat doesn’t quite mean to, but somewhere along the line — somewhere in between bites of cold noodles with sesame sauce — her defenses fall away and she tells him, spontaneously, that she is pregnant.
Leo’s noodly chopstick suspends over his plate like weeping willows. The expression he turns to her is kind, serious, free of judgment. “Congratulations. Is boyfriend happy?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll tell him eventually.”
“I see.”
“Last time he blew a fuse, then we broke up. I really think it’s my choice, and I have to make it alone.”
“S’pose so.”
“You don’t approve?”
“It’s your body, but I don’t see what you have to lose by telling the man. You may lose more by waiting.”
“Lose more?”
“Women are always bitching about being demeaned by us men. Well, lemme tellya somethin’, we get demeaned plenty, too. A man doesn’t know he’s fathered a child until someone tells him. Don’t you know straight men live with a knot in their guts just wondering?” He shrugs. “But I’m not you. I don’t live in your body. I don’t really know how it feels to live your life. You gotta know what’s best for you.” He twirls the noodles around his chopsticks and takes a hearty bite.
Cat had not even considered that, by withholding the news from Teddy, she is being just as irresponsible toward him as he was toward her during the first pregnancy, and she had resented him for it. Maybe she doesn’t really have the right to withhold the news from him. She thinks about it for the rest of the day as the chaos of the office is transformed into orderly rows of boxes. Leo doesn’t mention it again. When they part ways for the evening, he kisses her cheek. “Tomorrow, same time, same place?”
“See you then.”
It’s warm out, almost hot, but there’s a breezy dry feel in the air and Cat decides to walk for a while before getting into the subway. She is afraid to tell Teddy, despite her grandiose scheme for living alone, handling it, having her baby, being fine. She is afraid of that moment when it snaps, over, and he gets up to leave. But she remembers that she’s been through it before and she survived. She will survive this time, too. At 59th Street she descends into the tunnels and rides the number six train downtown.
She arrives home with her tiny-knot-of-cells Lucie multiplying swiftly in her uterus, expecting to find quiet, to march into the study where Teddy would be reading or writing at the desk and stand straight and tall in front of him and tell him. Instead, she enters a kitchen full of lush cooking smells, and Teddy, in a blue canvas apron, standing at the counter dicing an onion.
“Afternoon, kitten,” he says.
“Evening.”
“Ah, evening, you’re right. Is that maybe why I’m cooking dinner?”
“Glad you’re in a good mood.” She stands in the doorway between the kitchen and living room and crosses her arms over her chest.
Teddy stops dicing and looks at her. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“You won’t like it.”
He shrugs his shoulders and she begins.
“I just want to say, first of all, that I have no expectations of you whatsoever. That’s number one. Secondly, you don’t have to tell me that you’ve made your position clear, because I know that. And last of all, no matter what you may think of me, I am a capable person and I’m responsible for my own decisions.”
“I figure we’re due in June.”
“Excuse me?”
“I know you’re a capable and responsible person, but that doesn’t make me stupid.”
She stares at him, astounded, confused.
“You didn’t get your period, and your breasts are definitely bigger than usual.” He smiles, thin-lipped and sexy, and his eyes get their greatest dazzle look.
She doesn’t like this, not one bit. He wasn’t supposed to know her secret; it was supposed to belong only to her. She leaves him in the kitchen, goes to the bedroom and sits on the edge of the bed. He follows her in.
“You don’t have much faith in me,” he says, sitting down beside her.
She twists around to look at him. “Are you kidding me? After last time?”
“Last time was last time. We’ve both been through a lot.”
“You’ve got years before you get your degree,” she says. “You’re in no position to have a family.”
“Don’t forget it’s my kid, too.”
“What are you saying, Teddy?”
“We’ll stay right here. It’ll be a little crowded, but we’ll just stay put, do what we have to do. You’ll have the baby. We’ll manage. I can’t afford to buy you an engagement ring, but if you’ll take a rain check —”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“Cartoons are your department. I’m a serious guy.” He smiles brilliantly, taking her in his arms.
Feeling the warmth of his body, smelling the salty musk of his neck, she has no idea if love and hope and effort will be enough for them to go on, but she does know that she will try in every possible way to make this work. She realizes now that, despite the hypocritical bloat of the messenger, the heady message of her youth persists inside her. She does have enough grist to survive, and hopefully thrive, as a complete person all on her own. She doesn’t have all the answers yet, sitting here on her bed with her beloved. Her life is a maypole of loose ends. But somehow, sooner or later, she will find a way to make every end meet. And this time, he’s going to try with her.
“I don’t need an engagement ring,” she says. “I don’t want one.”
He seems to understand. Their arms tighten around each other and, face hidden in his neck, Cat cries with relief.
Cat agrees to meet Leo two days later at his parents’ house in Brooklyn Heights, to help organize storage. She turns onto a street called Columbia Heights, finds the house number Leo gave her, and stands in awe in front of the corner mansion facing the river and its quintessential bird’s-eye view of Manhattan. Before ringing the bell, she gives in to a temptation to walk around the house and stand on the Promenade for a minute.
There it is, the island of Manhattan, looking bigger and better from afar. This is the view they all use, the photographers and filmmakers, when they want to steer your imagination to the heart of the metropolis. They stand right here, in front of the Libbon house or one of its neighbors, and allow their wide angle lenses to drink in the river as it flows beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and up toward the Empire State Building, and as it curls southward around the twin monoliths of the World Trade Center, to the left of which the Statue of Liberty bears her torch. It is all here, everything you need to build dreams, just beyond Rochelle Libbon’s first window.
Leo greets her at the door. She feels a small thrill at the thought of entering the house she knows only through John Paglia’s descriptions. The real house is cozier than she had imagined — old and grand, full of bright polished wood, Oriental rugs and thick draperies. A wide staircase curves up from the spacious entry hall on either side of which are a set of French doors leading respectively to living room and dining room. A rich, sweet smell lingers in the air.
“Mom’s baking one of her things.” Leo rolls his eyes. “Come on, Parker’s in the kitchen. He’s been waiting for you.”
Leo maneuvers Cat through a dining room surrounded by windows covered in white lace curtains which partially obscure the magnificent view. The kitchen is large and renovated with modern appliances and wooden cabinets. At a central butcher block island, on a high stool, sits Parker with a large piece of paper and a set of colored markers. A small woman with short gray hair stands at one of the counters, cracking eggs into the bowl of a mixer.
“Mom, this is Rock’s assistant, Cat Gold.”
“So you’re the girl on the phone,” Mabel says.
“Nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Libbon.”
“Hi, Cat!” A loose front tooth dangles in Parker’s smile.
“Hey there.” She goes over to look at his picture of a tooth fairy depositing a box of riches by his bedside. “Nice drawing. Did you get the comics I sent you?”
Beaming, he smiles and nods. She ruffles her fingers through his hair.
“If I give you my address,” she says, “will you send me your drawings sometimes?”
“Yes! Will you send me more comic books?”
“You got it.”
Parker throws his arms around her, and they hug.
“You know,” Cat tells Mabel, “if you ever need to go out, I’d be happy to babysit.”
“What?” Mabel says, tugging her apron belt and squaring her shoulders. “Me. Go out? I’m not so sure the world’s ready for such a shock.” She breaks into a smile crowded with tea-yellowed teeth John failed to mention in the memoirs.
Cat laughs. “Leo’s got my number. Call anytime.”
“Okay,” Leo says. “Lovefest’s over. We’ve got work to do in the basement.”
“Not so fast, young man. She’s our guest. Maybe she’d like a bite to eat.”
“Hungry?” Leo asks Cat.
“No, thanks. I had lunch before I came.”
“All right, fine,” Mabel says. “You don’t look so well-fed to me, but anyway —” She shrugs her shoulders with so much expression that the bitter and controlling memoir-Mabel comes to life in Cat’s mind. And yet the real-life woman seems, well, so much more than a caricature.
“Can I come?” Parker asks.
“Sure, kiddo.” Leo squeezes Parker’s shoulder.
They take the staircase from the pantry that leads down into the basement. “I cleared some space over there.” Leo indicates the far wall in front of which is a wide open area. Nestled into the left corner is a jumble of bicycles and skis and baseball bats and dusty toys. “I moved all that stuff over there this morning.”
“Wow.” Parker heads into the pile. “This is so great! Can I have some of this stuff?”
“Whatever you want,” Leo says. “It hasn’t been used in years.”
“Cool, a bike!”
“Don’t you have one?”
“Mommy won’t let me.” Parker weeds through the pile until he has unearthed a red stingray with leather tassels on the handlebars.
“That was your Uncle Earl’s.”
“I don’t have an Uncle Earl.”
“Didn’t your mommy tell you about Earl?”
Parker shakes his head as he drags the bike to a piece of open floor.
“Earl was your mommy’s and my older brother,” Leo says. “He looked a lot like Uncle Robby.”
Parker tries to spin the wheels but they are so rusted they barely move. “This doesn’t go.”
“Well, we could get you a new one, how would that be?”
“I like this one.”
“Then we’ll get it fixed up for you.”
Parker sits on the long banana seat and makes a revving sound. “Here I come, Uncle Earl, ready or not!”
Leo looks at Cat. “Nothing ever dies, as they say. Did you know that Earl actually enlisted in the Vietnam War?”
Cat nods; she knows that, and so much else, about this family she has only just now met.
“Uncle Leo, when can we get it fixed?”
“How about tomorrow?”
Parker dismounts and tosses the bike on the floor. He goes running up the steps, calling, “Grandma, guess what?”
Leo looks at Cat and smiles.
“I took your advice,” Cat says. “I told Teddy.”
“It wasn’t advice, really.”
“I took it anyway.”
“And?”
“He already knew.”
“Well, it just goes to show.”
“Show what?”
“We ain’t as dumb as we look.” He winks. “I’ve already planned the wedding invitations, decorated with cherubs and shotguns.”
“Gee, thanks. But we haven’t gotten that far.”
“Keep me informed; I’m a sucker for gossip.”
“I will.” “And I’m a good listener, too. You’ve got my number.... Call me anytime.” “I just might.” They get to work, piling boxes against the wall with the oldest files on the bot tom and the newest on top. Everything is labeled in thick black marker. If Rocky Love should come back to her senses and back to life, and decide to recreate herself again, she will know exactly where to find her paper trail.