THE MAYBE BABY, PART 2
June 19th - 30th, 2022
I found him standing on our stairs, dusted with white ash and smoking a cigarette with surprisingly steady hands. My relief so overwhelmed me I could not even hold him. I covered my face with my hands and wept as our neighborhood drug dealer watched from a respectful distance.
What happened next was a blur. Barbara was in our apartment. I bandaged her feet while My Ex gave her water but where she went after that, I do not know. I never saw her again. Once she was out the door, My Ex started speaking rapidly, as if racing against malevolent memories. As if speaking them aloud would purge them. I listened attentively. I tried to catch every word.
He'd been with three other brokers, standing by their windows on the 26th floor, when the first plane hit the North Tower. Almost immediately people began jumping. My Ex and his colleagues instinctively screamed, “No!” though they knew they wouldn’t be heard. They watched as people stepped out of broken windows, making the choice between fire and air. It was a choice My Ex took personally, having survived a gas-fueled brush fire with third-degree burns from the waist down. He knew the feel of fire. It haunted him. He kept repeating one question over and over, “Would I have jumped?? Do you think I would have jumped?”
He needed an answer.
I could not give it.
I needed to know how he got out of the building. He explained that when the second plane flew into the South Tower, everyone on his floor started running. He made it to the street level where he waited in a long line to call from a pay phone. As the first tower began to collapse, he ran, this time grabbing a woman who was frozen in the middle of the street, screaming that her son was in daycare. He threw her into the lobby of a building before diving in after her.
The street trembled and shook, then filled with an avalanche of toxic dust as security guards and businessmen stripped off their suits and ties, removed their undershirts and tore them into strips, makeshift masks. Once the whiteout settled into a scratchy fog, My Ex and the others ventured out only to find themselves running again as the second tower collapsed. Again, he was lucky enough to find a different building lobby where he could wait out the dust storm before daring to walk home.
His eyes had seen too much. His pupils were dilated and black. He spoke aloud gruesome images I still hold in my mind and will not write knowing they poison the brain and can never be erased. My Ex saw my distressed expression, a mixture of shock and repulsion, and he stopped mid-sentence. I watched him swallow back all he needed to release in order to protect me. He acted as a witness that day, to the living and the dying of the jumpers. In that moment most horrible, My Ex made his choice. To watch, to watch. And honor those dying by remembering, standing graveside for their final goodbyes, acting as witness to what so few, including me, were willing to bear, capable of bearing. He would carry it alone.
That night, I lay beside My Ex and wept for all the women whose husbands did not return. The next morning, he coughed up blood and his back broke out in hard, saucer-size hives. I forced him into an emergency room where he refused to have his medical bills covered by the emergency fund saying, “There are people who need it more than me.” But there weren't. The emergency room was empty. We tried to donate blood. They didn't need it. There were no injuries to treat because there were no survivors.
For the next year, we struggled terribly. The building where My Ex worked was blown apart and his brokerage firm moved their base of operations out of the city. He was unemployed for months and refused to apply for any of the relief, therapy or help programs we both so desperately needed. The West Virginian in him came roaring out: keep your shit to yourself. It was at first, aggravating and then maddening and then infuriating.
Why in the fuck did he have to be so proud?
Couldn't we, just this once, ask for help?
I did not handle those months gracefully. I resented his pride. I resented his depression. I resented our growing debt, his continued health problems for which he would seek no treatment. I felt I had to carry the burden of our survival alone so when The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis called offering a Jerome Fellowship and nine months of uninterrupted time to write, I bailed. I left My Ex in that defeated city and I took off, somehow convincing myself we would survive the distance.
We did.
And we didn't.
On the one-year anniversary of 9/11, My Ex called me in Minnesota. Manhattan was outraged over a statue. Eric Fischl’s Tumbling Woman had been placed inside Rockefeller Center where it met with violent protests. People felt it implied a moment of impact, a graphic moment of a human splattering on a sidewalk despite the fact that it more resembled tumbleweed, a woman rolling, tumbling, in constant movement through air.
The sculpture was draped with a black cloth and removed. The fury of the city confirmed My Ex's worst fear. That inside him lay the ugliest of memories, never to be spoken lest the villagers shoot the messenger. The city only wanted to remember those who rushed into the burning towers. It wanted to grieve for those lost to stone and steel. It did not want to remember those who held hands, prayed, reasoned it out, panicked, made a choice, were alone, escaped and jumped.
Our memorials of war must be men, proudly decorated, uniformed and struggling toward patriotism. If more feminine in design they must be abstract. Walls of names. Towers of light, ethereal, distant, untouchable.... Memory does not want to stand at eye level with the awkward bronze body of a fallen angel, a woman who could have been a mother, a sister, a daughter. What we want is hope. We don't want truth. We will honor those murdered. But those that jumped…
We drape a black cloth over what happened that day. Remove it from our lobbies and our memories as those groping, flailing, heavenly bodies go forgotten. Faced with an incomprehensible decision, they died on their own terms. And we the living are not brave enough to say; they were not cowards. We are not certain enough to say, it was my husband, my love, my child. We cannot stand by the window as a witness. We cannot stand by that statue and remember. For the knowing, then knowing is unbearable.
That we ourselves might have chosen to fly.
Our relationship limped through another eight years, the last two spent untouched, during which I became an uber-productive, highly-accomplished, resume-toting, five-time published, sexually frustrated mess. It got so bad, for my thirty-seventh birthday, my dear friend Julia showed up on my front porch with a brown paper bag containing one…bright…pink…dildo.
This was COMPLETELY out of character for Julia.
Julia is an accomplished woman in her own right. an award-winning screenwriter, television creator and nationally produced playwright with three different degrees from three different prestigious universities, Berkeley, NYU, and Juilliard. Julia is a woman whose movies are nominated for Oscars and whose plays melt cold reviewers' hearts. She’s a Korean Grace Kelly, if you will. Poised, beautiful and thoughtful, she is not often found browsing sex stores for plastic dick.
But Julia had been by my side all through grad school and bore witness to the ferocity of my libido. Having never had the luxury of being a full-time coed, I took full advantage of being a “returning adult” and tore through the boys as if they were wrapping paper. Shiny foil, ribbons flying, it was Christmas time and I wanted all the presents for myself.
There was the stunningly beautiful Tommy Hilfiger model, six foot six with ebony skin and luscious lips. There were the Israeli cousins that looked more like twin brothers, who'd been trained in hand-to-hand combat, worked as Medics on the Gaza Strip and who came as a pair. Then there'd been the coke-sniffing, bottle-downing, salsa-dancing chef from Venezuela who nearly destroyed me. I fell madly for him, until he threw a plate at a wall and I had the police escort him away.
Witness and confidant to each wild affair, Julia never judged but when the diplomas were signed, the rented gowns returned and my romping rampage was over, Julia was happy to see me settle into a long-term “not marriage” with my high-school sweetheart. She did not know our love had gone cold. Beyond not having sex, we weren't kissing. We weren't hugging. We weren't touching. I slept on the couch most nights. It took two years before I finally confessed. During one long, slow walk from Casa Del Mar to the Venice Pier, Julia listened intently. We both cried a little.
Then she went out and bought me a pink dildo.
Julia sat on my red living room couch, her eyes wide. “You wouldn't believe the size of some of those things,” Julia gestured as if a fisherman bragging about the one that got away. “And they come in, you know, skin tones.” Julia opted for a girly pink instead, in case My Ex found it in a drawer. Hot pink might seem less threatening than 10, thick, constantly erect inches of silicone Caucasian, Latino or African-American.
Thirty-seven, in my sexual prime, and I was sneaking around the bedroom, trying to find a good hiding spot for my vibrating, spinning, turgid new friend. That should have been the sign. That should have been the bright pink cock upside my head that smacked some sense into me and maybe, in hindsight it was.
But it still took three more months for me to leave.
*********************
The first step was to stop. Stop pretending things would get better. Stop saying tomorrow. Stop saying maybe. Stop saying if this…then that. The first step was a steep drop into reality.
I hated his snoring. I loathed his snoring. I resented that he refused to see a doctor about it. I resented that the Breathe Right nasal strips didn't work for him and eventually, I resented him for breathing. Every night, I went to bed enraged. Knowing, knowing, the snoring would take over, bully me out of the sheets, push me out the door and force me onto the couch, blanketed in fury. Closing the bedroom door did not help. Sleeping beside a fan did not help. His snoring became a wall, became a war, became the end of us.
I was fucking sleeping on the fucking couch and paying half the fucking rent at thirty-fucking-seven years of age and I was fucking living like a prisoner in my own fucking home. That was just as much as my fucking bed as it was his and my fucking apartment and it was my fucking life on fucking hold!
Being the reformed West Virginian, I decided we needed therapy.
My Ex adhered to a strict policy of consistency. He worked in a medium of familiarity. In his eyes, a growing discomfort maintained together was better than pulling apart. Did he fear couples counseling would reveal us as frauds? Is that why he fought going? Did he lose his desire for me or did I single-handedly destroy it? Did it ever actually exist?
He balked at the “sexercises” suggested by Barry, our orange-haired, $200 an hour sex mediator. He was adamant sex should be spontaneous, organic, then did everything in his power to avoid me. Work hours got later. The TV was endlessly on. A constant numbing out. I became entirely invisible. One big throw pillow on his couch of life and I am not a throw pillow woman. Decorative, seen but not heard, laid upon but not held. I am not a prop. I let it go on too long because the love was big, the history was nearly the entirety of my existence.
Then, things got worse.
My Ex was a man who could bear great sorrow, hold his ground in swirling storms. He could tolerate misery. It was his familiar state of existence. It was his past disguised as his present and if need be, he'd resigned himself to live it as his future. He said “let's have the baby and we'll figure out the rest” and that was unacceptable to me.
I wanted it all. I wanted love and passion. I wanted joy and companionship. I wanted desire and friendship. I wanted sex in my marriage. It wasn't enough, our imperfections. It wasn't enough, his unconditional love and unwavering faith in me. It wasn't enough that he made me a better person. That he made me stronger just by loving me. It wasn't enough to keep me from leaving him.
He moved out the following weekend.
I climbed in Julia’s car as her husband helped load boxes into a Penske Truck. It was smaller than the one we’d used moving to LA together. I couldn't watch him go. Julia and I walked Main Street, stepping first into what seemed to be a vintage store only to find it was a vintage wedding dress boutique. Julia gasped in horror and quickly ushered me out and into the next open door. Baby clothes. “Oh God, I'm so sorry!” Julia frantically dragged me to the sidewalk where we stood on the precipice of horror and tears until out of some very deep place inside me, laughter emerged. I howled. Then Julia howled and we stood there laughing because there was nothing else to do.
It was all so ludicrous.
Ending a marriage that never existed.
I decided I’d have my Maybe Baby on my own.
Me and my Maybe Baby - we needed Back-up Daddies.
Daddies. Not Daddy. Meaning I’d decided my gay beaus, Tony & Dom were the right men for the job. I’d known Tony since we were third period office assistants at Roosevelt Junior High. Two years my senior, Tony always seemed so well-prepared for life. He toted umbrellas on rainy days and kept breath mints handy in case the cafeteria served Sloppy Jo’s.
I’d watched his transformation from a Jheri curled teacher’s pet to a cashmere sweatered Vice President at Yves St. Laurent. He’d witnessed my trek from shaved-head punk to nationally produced playwright. Tony and I have scoop (and most likely photos) that can destroy each other, which makes us family. Even if he insists on not only wearing leopard print slippers, but pronouncing them as “lay-o-pard slippers” with an adopted Yves St. Frou Frou accent as both Dom and I roll our eyes and Dom declares, “Oh my God, honey, you are so gay.”
They were. They are. Gay, gay, gay. Gay as the day is long. And God bless them, they have been together forever and fuck the people who say that isn’t love. Tony and Dom made it past the seven-year itch, they made it past the prejudices of being in an interracial relationship, hell, they even made it out of Sound Factory in the 90’s to build a life together and it seemed to me, if two men could still love (and hear) each other after surviving Junior Vasquez, they’d probably make good baby daddies.
I sat on Tony’s meticulously maintained white sofa. “I’m thirty-seven and I’ve just ended this relationship and I am at a place where, if I’m gonna have a kid, I have to try in the next two years.” Tony and Dom had strained smiles plastered across their faces. I pressed on. “But that’s a tremendous burden to find a man and fall in love and have a relationship ready to welcome a child in two years, that’s fast! It’s not realistic or even smart and I don’t want to do that to a man. I don’t want to be that woman. That woman is horrible!” Dom leaned back in his Eames cowhide leather lounge chair, listening cautiously. “So, I’m thinking, next year, if there’s no man who has miraculously swept me off my feet, that the three of us have a baby together.”
There was a micro-second of shocked silence before Tony burst into laughter. “Wha-ha-ha-ha-hat? What?” Dom searched both of our faces unsure of how to respond then all of us began laughing because it was so uncomfortable and so very ME to even be asking. I kept going, “I’m not one-hundred percent sure I want to do this. I’m taking the year to think and I don’t even know if you two want kids but I didn’t want to spring this on you next June.” Tony was still laughing nervously. I grabbed his hand and gave it a good squeeze. “I mean, honey, we don’t have to pick black or white right now.” There were many hugs and kisses and Dom said he was honored and then we had Thai food.
Eleven months later - one month before my self-proclaimed Maybe Baby deadline - I met Clayton. Two years and twenty-seven hours of hard labor later, my very real, very own little-blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby girl was born, making me a very real mother. I’d declared my intention aloud and this abandoned daughter’s dream came true. There, in the soapy suds of her evening bath, sat Cecilia…as I washed her blonde hair…sang her songs…and she screamed her bloody head off.
Ceci hated baths.
Eleven years into parenthood, I had no interest in restarting the clock with a newborn baby. Fifty and pregnant? No way my body could handle it. No way the baby would be okay. No way I’d be a widow with a military “baby daddy.” Nope. Nuh-uh. Nah. Single mom, single kid. I was one and done.
Still, no period.
I couldn’t deny it any longer. I snuck into a Thai pharmacy to buy a test….and was relieved when it came back negative. Hooray, no baby! Boo, perimenopause! Then, Kez found the test. Maybe he saw it, tossed in my bathroom trash. I don’t remember the details. I remember his response.
“What the fuck?” He stared at me, a flash of disbelief and anger in his eyes. “Who?”
“The Army Major.” I ducked my head, suddenly ashamed. Why was I ashamed?
I hadn’t told Kez about my final fling. It never crossed my mind that he’d expect to know. That’s why his reaction surprised me. It was a hard scoff of a laugh, incredulous and dismissive. Beyond disappointment. Disenchantment. I felt as if I’d betrayed our friendship, in some unspoken way. A boundary I’d crossed without even knowing there was a line.
He turned it into a joke. Pretending I was pregnant with Mister A’s baby. Not The Army Major’s baby. Mister A’s baby. That I got knocked up in Thailand. That Mister A would follow me to America. I’d raise his Thai babies. I didn’t get the joke.
But just like that call from Olomana, we did not discuss it further.
It was a spark to flash paper.
Bright, hot and gone.
Cecilia and I took a day to go play without Kez and Jeff. We needed pure fun, no hiking up steep stairs, no bats in a cave, no ethically sketchy markets or gaping elephant mouths. We went to the Grand Canyon Water Park, a flooded quarry with an inflatable obstacle course, zip lines and paddle-boats. We chased each other on the rubbery floats, drank tall iced teas and ate pizza, which we hadn’t had in over a month. We did all the things you normally do when you’re on vacation. We let loose.
And you know what?
It was great.
Four days later, we said goodbye to our peaceful little villa. Goodbye to our neighbors. Goodbye to our happy little days of throwing bowls and stopping for lunch. Goodbye to Jern, our teacher and his lazy dog. Goodbye to our guardian angel, Mister A, who drove us to the airport and saw us off with hugs and bowed blessings. A final moment of friendship and peace. We said goodbye to Chiang Mai.
Things went south from there.
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