A Perfect Life (29 page)

“Think a sharp pair of eyes would do me any better on a day like this? Now, my
ears
. Wouldn't want to lose those.
Ears is how I know half what's out there.” He blew a blast on his horn. The echo came back delayed, as if another ship had moaned in the fog to our left. “‘Blind as a bat,' is it? Bat wouldn't have no trouble hearing its way in.” He squeezed the horn, tilted his head to hear the echo, turned the steering wheel a few degrees to the right. In this way, we drew close to Spinsters Island, the dock looming from the fog an instant before we would have hit it. He tossed the rope, missed, tugged it back, tossed it again. This time the loop caught. He jumped off the boat and set the ladder. “Just don't you go around expecting no hero's welcome,” he told me.

I didn't expect anything, I said.

“Person's made a certain way, that's the way he's meant to be made. Gets time for him to pass over, he passes over. You go around taking away the things make a person who he is, he ends up not being anyone.”

The road shook beneath my feet. I had intended to walk to Thunder Beach, but the thought of the icy spray made me reconsider. I followed Stacks up the road. The windows of the houses had been blinded with plywood boards and foil. The town had turned its hindquarters to the world and curled up for the winter; disturbed in hibernation, it might gnash its teeth and strike out.

Stacks asked if I was planning on staying or going back.

Of course I was going back.

“See that you're on time then. There'll be a storm tonight for sure.”

I walked to Eve Barter's garage. A light flickered in the kitchen.

“Door's unlatched!” she called. “Just about finished, Rudy. Come in.”

I went in and found Eve working at a table covered with the parts of a dismantled engine. On a corner of the red-and-white-checked oilcloth sat two baking tins of popovers, a kettle, and a cup. Eve's hair, curled in rollers, was hidden beneath a scarf. Her breasts swelled from her robe. She wiped the carburetor with a rag, then held it up and peered inside. “I thought you were Rudy Sugar, come to get his DeSoto.”

I asked how she had learned to work on cars.

She wrenched free a spark plug. “Always liked working with my hands.” She blew inside the carburetor and wiped it with her rag. “Sewing seemed just about the most boring thing a person could do. Came time for the boys and girls to split up in seventh grade, I said I wanted to take shop. The principal didn't have any objections, so long as I agreed to take home ec, too. Which I'm glad I did, because it turned out I liked the baking part just fine. Stuck out my chest and talked sweet to the shop teacher, he didn't object either. Opportunity to buy this garage came along, I was ready to take advantage.”

“How did you come to buy the garage? May I ask?”

Eve set down the carburetor and picked up a screwdriver. “You come all the way from Boston to ask me that? Is this a business call? Pleasure? Isn't exactly the best season for a visit.”

“It's a business call. Mostly.”

“Need some more blood?” There was a catch in Eve's laugh, like an engine misfiring.

“That's part of it. There were some discrepancies.”

“Yeah?” she said. “What sorts of discrepancies?”

“I was wondering if you might be related to someone on the island. I know you said you weren't, but maybe you forgot. Maybe it's someone who's only distantly related.”

“I got it, don't I.” She stabbed the table with her screwdriver. “Didn't ruin enough lives. Must be laughing in his grave, the cunt-sucking son of a bitch. What'd he ever give me? I ask you. What'd that miserable fucker ever give me except this garage and his filthy blood?” She raised her arm to sweep the engine parts to the floor, then reconsidered. “Bad enough what he did to all those young girls here. He gets run off to the mainland and messes up my mom. Fifteen years old and pregnant by a man she doesn't even know.”

I moved a step closer.

“That cock-fucking mothersucker. Must have had some fit of repentance. Lawyer we never heard of tells us this Ransom guy left Mom his garage. As if she might say, ‘Oh, fine, he left me a garage on some shitty island, that makes amends for what he done.'” Eve yanked off her kerchief and began pulling out her curlers. “But me, I was a kid. Didn't have much prospects. Sort of curious, owning something and not knowing what it looked like. Mom said to come out and sell it, but I decided to stick around.” She yanked the screwdriver from the table, then jammed it in again. “Son of a cock-sucking, bitch-fucking bastard.”

I lifted Eve's hands. The back of each was hatched by burns. “My mother had these, too,” I said. “She used to reach in the oven to get out a pan, and her arms would jerk, and she'd burn the backs of her hands on the top rack.”

Eve put her arms around my waist and leaned her head against me. I stroked her damp hair. After a few minutes, she sat up straight and wiped her eyes on the greasy rag. “Don't feel bad for telling me. Not like I didn't guess. I just needed a kick in the pants is what I needed. Last thing I want to do is to hang around and end up like the rest of these sorry so-and-sos. I'll sell the place and get out while I can. Just don't spread the news. I'd rather not anyone put two and two together and figure out who my dad was.”

I promised I would keep the diagnosis to myself.

“I suppose that was the business part. You want some hot popovers? Sit down and I'll make us a fresh pot of tea.”

I said no, but she kept insisting. Still wearing my parka, I sat. Eve poured us both tea from the china pot. We ate three popovers apiece. And it came to me that this must have been part of why I'd come, to drink tea with Eve Barter and so be forgiven for the unforgivable message I had brought.

After I left Eve's kitchen, I wandered back to the dock. Charlie Stacks stood at the prow of his boat, sniffing the air. It was only four thirty, but the sun was going down. I could smell the storm coming, although I couldn't have told you what it smelled like. I stared across the water. I didn't look forward to consoling Maureen. And I was even less eager to get back to the lab. Maybe it would be better to let Yosef read the results. Would it be less excruciating to hold the gun myself, or ask someone else to hold it? I
had to laugh. If I let Yosef read the blot, would I be playing
Russian roulette
?

We were halfway across the bay when Stacks clasped a hand to his chest as if he were pledging allegiance. “I'm not feeling so well,” he said. “Town's that way. Stay this course, but keep an eye out for rocks.”

He waited until I had taken the wheel then staggered out of the cabin. Maybe he was trying to prove that my eyes, though younger than his, were less useful than his ears. I saw nothing but the horizon, the sun resting on the land like a note on a stave. I craned my head out the door. “Mr. Stacks? Are you all right?”

I should have shut the engine and gone to see if he needed first aid. But I didn't know how to restart the boat. I looked for a way to make the engine go faster, but neither lever produced this result. I twisted the dials on the radio but heard only static. If I headed straight for the setting sun I would be sure to reach the mainland. But what about the rocks? I glanced at the coffee-stained map. Wasn't that guppyish shape the island? I was afraid to take my eyes from the sea, but every now and then I tried squinting at the map, and I grew more confident I could steer my way in, avoiding the giant sandbar lurking to my left, the shoals off to starboard.

After what seemed forever, a steeple pricked the sky. Lumpy buildings. Faint lights. I steered clear of a rock on which a gull sat flapping its wings and laughing. Then I passed a buoy whose bell clamored in our wake. I was congratulating myself on having navigated my way to the shore
when I realized that the map I had been using was upside down.

I approached the dock sideways but cut the motor too late. A knot of fishermen on the wharf watched the boat drift by. “Get a doctor!” I shouted as I ran the boat aground.

“What the hell you doing!” Stacks called.

Two fishermen sauntered toward the ferry. The shorter and less attractive—he reminded me of a hedgehog—reached up and swung me down. I ran to find Miriam. Halfway along Front Street, my body seemed too heavy to move. I gulped air to keep from vomiting, then forced myself to run the rest of the way. The three women in Miriam's waiting room studied me as if they could guess I was pregnant and expected me to miscarry right there. I brushed past the receptionist, through the frosted door, and choked out an explanation.

“Damn him,” Miriam said. She asked the woman on her examining table to watch Raphael, who was chewing on a rusk. She called the nearest hospital and demanded an ambulance, then gathered a stethoscope, an oxygen tank, and some drugs and stuffed these in her bag. Raphael started crying. “I'll kill that selfish old coot,” Miriam grumbled.

When we got back to the beach, Stacks was slumped against an oil barrel like something that had washed ashore and nobody cared to salvage. “Ain't going to that hospital,” he told Miriam.

“Yes you damn well are. And you're going to let them put that pacemaker in. I won't have you calling me out at all hours and disturbing my child.”

The ambulance came. The EMTs ignored Stacks's protests and shoved him in the van. Miriam grumbled good-bye to me and hurried back to her office. The fishermen stared at me as if they expected me to do something with the boat. I backed away, as if this were a conspiracy to lure some unsuspecting passenger into taking Stacks's place and ferrying the mail back and forth to Spinsters Island forever.

I kept walking out of town. I was nearly to Paul's house when he rode up behind me.

“Where did you leave her?” I said.

“You sound as if you think I did away with her. I had a board meeting. It wasn't as if I knew she was coming.”

I had forgotten how attractive he was. Poor Maureen.

“It's not what you're thinking. It just came to me, after I proposed, that I would be wrong to leave here. It would sound more admirable to claim the people here need me. But it's the reverse that's true. What would I be in Boston? I'm sure I could manufacture a cause. But I wouldn't be as valuable there as I am here. I've told her straight out, if she decides to move up here, we'll get married anytime. I know the sacrifice she would be making. I'll understand if she chooses not to make it. But I'm not a coward. I'm not a hypocrite.”

“You're a bureaucrat,” I said. “She keeps getting screwed by bureaucrats.”

We climbed the steps to Paul's house. “Thank God,” Maureen said. “If I had to sit here another minute . . .”

He carried her to the van. I clamped the wheelchair behind the steering wheel, settled in the chair, and turned
the key. Paul stood beside Maureen's window, but she wouldn't look his way, as if her neck had lost its last degree of mobility.

“I'll write you,” he said. “We can still be friends, can't we?”

“No,” Maureen said. “I don't think we can.”

When we reached the main road, she blew her nose. “I can't believe I have to start over. From scratch. I was tempted to pitch it all and stay. But I would go nuts here, Jane. I would go absolutely nuts, cooped up in that house. I love him. But since when has loving someone ever been enough?”

Neither of us was in a rush to get back. After an hour on the road I told Maureen I was too tired to keep driving. We checked into a bed and breakfast. The bathroom was too small for Maureen's chair; I helped her hobble to the toilet, then turned and waited until she was ready to hobble back. There was only one bed. We stripped to our underwear and settled on opposite sides of the mattress.

Maybe we should stay awhile, I said.

Maureen asked for how long.

I don't know, I said. An extra day. Maybe two.

Sure, Maureen said.

I told her that I was pregnant.

“Oh, sweetie.” She sighed. She held my hand and sympathized but didn't offer advice, whether because she was too tired and depressed or because she knew I wouldn't listen. It came to me again that if we had grown up in a society in which pregnant couples were able to test their fetus to make sure it didn't carry the genes for any serious disease, Maureen probably wouldn't have been alive.

We slept hours past breakfast. The day was brilliant but cold, even for December. Huddled inside our jackets we scurried from shop to shop, browsing through shelves of plastic lobsters and picturesque postcards of the islands offshore. I thought of sending one to Willie, but what would I have written?
I'm having your child, let's get married
. Or:
I've decided to abort it
. I wondered if I would ever lead a life in which I could drop a postcard to my boyfriend with a simple “I miss you.”

We slept twelve hours that night, ate our breakfast with the other guests, then tried to stroll the boardwalk, but we couldn't withstand the wind.

“We might as well go home,” Maureen said.

We might as well, I said.

We expected the weather would turn warmer farther south, but the wind grew more bitter. The heater whimpered and squealed, then stopped working. Rather than wait in a grimy service station for some mechanic to repair it, we sat rigid with cold, breath clouding our faces, all the way back to Boston. It was a Thursday afternoon. Most people were at work. The Charles was filmed with ice.

I parked the van and helped Maureen get out. She poked around in the depths of her overnight bag, then pulled out a tissue. “On top of everything, I'm coming down with a cold.” She blew her nose. “Let me know what you decide. I'll shake myself out of this.”

“Don't worry about me,” I said. “You've got your own problems.”

I walked home and spooned a jar of peanut butter onto stale rye bread for dinner. Around eight, I wrapped a scarf around my face and biked to the lab. Going up in the elevator, I wiped my nose on my scarf; I was getting Maureen's cold.

“Homozygous mouse is fine,” Yosef said. “I just came back from checking. As for the test, all you got to do on your own DNA is develop the blot. Other gel is hybridizing, it should be ready tomorrow. You want me to stay? I don't like to think you're here all by yourself.”

I thanked him but said I didn't want anyone around when I read it. He understood, didn't he?

“No,” he said. “If it's me, I want friend around to help take bad news. Or help enjoy good news.” He put his lips to my ear. “I'll be praying,” he whispered.

I took the cassette—a piece of X-ray film clamped between cardboard sheets—and spun the darkroom door. I flicked on the red light, and, hands moving by rote, slid the film from its sheath. I set the timer for a few seconds longer than required. I wasn't in any hurry. I shook off the extra drops of fixer from the film. I tried to calm my thoughts, but my heart beat as wildly as a Geiger counter. I turned on the white light and found the lane I wanted. The heavy smudge, here, and the empty space, there, meant I had inherited one good gene from my father and another good gene from my mother.

I went limp. My legs buckled. I sank to the floor
.
“Thank you,” I kept saying, although I wasn't sure whom I was thanking. God wouldn't use a person's health to punish
or reward her, would he? Still, I found myself bargaining:
Don't let Laurel have it. Let both of us be okay.

I plunged my X-ray in the fixer for another five minutes. Later, carrying my film down the hall, I stared at the empty space where the marker should have been but wasn't. I clipped the film above my bench, then sat and watched it dry. Yosef came in. I looked up at him and smiled.

“Thank God,” he said quietly.

“I already thanked him.”

He laughed. “Two Jewish atheists thanking God, is funny.” He kissed my hair. His lips lingered. “You come over. I'll get some champagne. We'll make a very big celebration.”

I almost said yes. But that wasn't what I wanted, getting drunk with Yosef. We would end up in bed, and everything between us, all this tenderness, would be ruined. I would need to see him in the lab the next day and pretend we hadn't had sex.

“Not tonight,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

He jabbed a Camel in his mouth. Usually, he obeyed the rule about not smoking in the lab, but he lit the cigarette and inhaled, and when he let out that breath, all his hope and animation seemed to go with it. “Sure,” he said. “You change your mind later, you call me at home, no matter what the time.”

I would do that, I said. He made the thumbs-up sign, hugged me again, and went out. I didn't want to leave the film hanging where anyone could see it, so I pressed it in Saran Wrap, slipped it inside my parka, and biked home. I hung the film from the Venetian blinds in the kitchen and then paced the living room. “I'm lucky,” I said aloud.
“I don't have it. I won't die.” But how could I believe that? How could a smudge on a piece of film reveal anything so private and essential about me? How could it make me another Jane Weiss?

I dialed my father's number, but before anyone could answer I hung up.
What about Laurel?
he would ask. He would be in Boston that weekend for her concert. If my sister's test, like mine, turned out to be negative, I could see the happiness on his face when I told him that both his daughters were fine. And if Laurel's test turned out positive, maybe my own good news would temper his grief.

I phoned Maureen instead.

“That's wonderful,” she croaked. “I'm so happy for you. That's terrific.” But nothing she said seemed ecstatic enough. Maybe, deep inside, she envied my good luck. Or maybe nothing anyone could say would satisfy a person who had learned she wouldn't die.

“We'll go dancing,” Maureen promised.

“Great,” I said. “We'll do that.”

I looked for Willie's number in New Hampshire. It was past ten. I imagined the phone ringing in his shack with no one there to hear. I was trying to figure out what message I would leave when Willie said, “Hey.” For a moment I couldn't answer. “Anyone there?” he asked.

“It's me,” I said. “It's Jane.”

“Jane,” he said. “Hey. How are you? Are you all right? Is something wrong?”

“I thought maybe you could come down here tomorrow instead of Saturday.”
Go ahead, you can say it.
“I need to talk to you. I need to see you.”

He told me he could come right then, if I wanted.

I looked around at the threadbare couch that had come with the apartment and the empty beakers in which I had arranged Laurel's bouquets. Yes, I said. I wouldn't mind if he came. I would be grateful.
Please, come.

“I'll be there in two hours. Is that okay? I could drive faster, if I needed to drive faster.”

“No,” I said. “Two hours. That's fine.”

He took an hour and forty-five minutes to drive down from New Hampshire. In the meantime, I unpacked my mother's books and found a photo of a fetus at twelve weeks' gestation, the face featureless except for those darkly lidded eyes. The gelatinous arms and fingers hung poised like those of a pianist preparing to play. In the center of the chest, a crimson blob beat 150 times a minute—even faster than my own heart had chattered in the darkroom a few hours earlier, when I was being reborn. It wasn't a question of when life started, I thought. It wasn't a question of whether I would care for a child who had been born with an illness that couldn't be foreseen. Like any mother, I would do everything possible to save my child's life. But wasn't it wrong to knowingly give birth to a child who would suffer? And what if the child had a one-in-two chance? Or less, a one-in-four chance. Was that half a sin? One quarter?

I heard someone on the stairs. Willie's hair was a mess. He stepped into the living room and stood awaiting my instructions.

“I don't have it,” I said.

“You don't have what?” he said. “The baby?”

“The test . . . I don't have Valentine's.”

I watched the news travel from his brain to his heart. He kissed me on the mouth, then crushed me to his parka and swung me around the living room, whooping so loudly I was afraid he would wake the landlord. “This is great!” he said. “Don't shush me!” He whooped again. “Jesus, if you can't make noise at a time like this!” He whooped a third time, spinning me until we sprawled awkwardly across the couch. I wanted to say:
If my result makes you so happy, why don't you take the test?
But I knew this made sense only if I could promise that he, too, would have a negative result. How could all three of us be so lucky? All four.

We talked about the baby. Again I brought up the possibility that Willie let himself be tested. When he repeated his refusal, I had to sit on my hands to keep from hitting him. “I'm kind of thirsty,” he said.

I didn't have any chocolate milk, but I offered to make him some hot cocoa. I spooned powder in two cups and boiled water in a pan. Bringing the cups to the living room, I stumbled. Chocolate sloshed to the rug. The old fear surged back. Then I thought:
I'm just clumsy.
Most people were. Not those few graceful human beings like Cruz and my sister, but everyone else. “Should I go?” Willie asked. “I could find a room at a hotel.”

I panicked. “No. Stay.”

He thumped the cushion he was sitting on; dust rose about our heads. “On this ratty thing?”

We put down our cocoa and I led him to my room, to the single bed covered with the daisy-print comforter my mother had picked out from Weiss's linen department the week I left for college.

“You sure about this?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I want to do it anyway.”

“What guy could refuse an invitation like that?” He unbuttoned his shirt, unlaced his red sneakers, and lay down in his jeans. I stretched out beside him. The bed was barely wide enough for him, let alone for both of us. I put my head on his chest, which was hairy and soft and smelled like the woods on a rainy day. I had missed this the most without knowing it, lying with my cheek against a man's chest, hearing his heart. He rubbed my back. He lifted off my shirt and kissed my neck, then kissed each swollen breast and tender nipple. I wrapped my arms around his back and squeezed until his spine cracked. We made love, long, slow love, every second stretching out longer than a normal second. Exhausted, we slept. A car alarm went off. I leaped up, looked around the room, took a breath, and relaxed. We made love a second time. In the morning, when we awoke, he reached for me again, but this time I pulled back. In a little while I would be developing Laurel's blot. If her test turned out badly, I would never forgive myself for making love with him that day.

We ate, washed, and dressed, then walked to the lab holding gloved hands. When Yosef saw me, he grinned and presented me with a rose. Then he noticed Willie. I could hear Yosef think:
Sure, Russkie can't compete with American cowboy looks like John Wayne.
Well, I thought, he would need to get used to Willie's presence. Everyone would.

I went into Vic's office. He was talking on the phone. I waited until he set down the receiver. “My blot turned out negative. I don't have the gene.”

He bowed his head and twined his fingers. When he looked up again, his face was wet. “This is what it was all about, wasn't it. Jane, I think that half the reason I wanted this moratorium was because I was so sure you had it. I thought I could prevent you from finding out. Wasn't that crazy? But there's this side of it, this blessing. People finding out they've got their whole lives ahead of them.” He stared up at the ceiling. “And your sister? Here I've been acting as if . . . Have you done her test yet? Does she . . . Well, does she?”

I felt a pressure behind my eyes. “I'm about to find out. Wish us luck, okay?”

“I do.” He swiped his cheeks with his knuckles. “Believe me, I do.”

I took Laurel's blot to the darkroom. Willie followed me through the door. I stood there a while, the undeveloped blot pressed between my hands as if my sister's fate would remain blank until someone read the dashes and dots on this X-ray. How long had it been since I had thought like a scientist? I turned on the red light and slipped the film from its jacket. Dipped it in the developer. Set the timer for two minutes, then started counting to one hundred and twenty myself. I did the same for the fixative. When the timer rang, I jerked the film from the tank and held it to the light. A few drops of fixative drizzled on my face.

“So?” Willie said. “So, so, so?”

I looked twice, then a third time, and then a fourth. My breath escaped in a rush. “She doesn't have it either. Look, there, that empty spot. She doesn't have it! She doesn't have it!” I was trembling so hard I would have been
sure I had Valentine's, except I knew the real reason: I was trembling from joy.