Fire & Water (35 page)

Though he was a hemisphere away, it felt like Burt was at the kitchen table beside me. “It’s not like that. We’re not meant to wreck ourselves out of loyalty. That’s not love, that’s masochism. And you’ve got Ryan to consider.”

I thought I’d choke on my next words. “But Jake is better with Ryan than I am. I don’t know how to be a good mother by myself.” I closed my eyes, shielding myself from the shame of my confession. I told the ugly truths about how I’d all but abandoned her and sat drinking at the bar until I passed out each night.

“Oh Kate. You didn’t abandon Ryan. You took her home to the folks that love her best. You’ve been suffering too. This drinking and avoiding Ryan, that’s not who you are. This secrecy is killing you. Jake loves Ryan. He’s a wonderful daddy when he’s not having one of his—well, his episodes. But he can’t be that daddy anymore. You’ve got good mothering instincts. Jake’s just upstaged you, that’s all. He does that. His light is so bright it’s easy to forget who you are around him.”

I knew Burt’s words were as true for himself as they were for me.

“Ryan knows who her mum is. She gives you her fits because she knows you’ll be strong enough to handle her. She never acts up for Jake because he’s too fragile.”

His words were a balm. As he spoke, the muscles in my shoulders relaxed. As I listened, I watched the sun break, casting a tangerine glow over the Golden Gate. “You forgot who you are, too, didn’t you?” I asked.

“I did. But you helped me to remember. That’s the friend you are. That’s the mother you can be for Ryan.”

Unfamiliar hope was a butterfly within me. “Thanks, Burty.”

“I’ll book my flight home straight away,” he said.

I wiped my tears and felt myself smile for the first time in a very long time.

* * *

After spending that first night with Jake at Sea Cliff, Ryan and I went back to Murphy’s. It was early morning, and the pub was empty. I was surprised when Ryan seemed happy to be going back to the flat upstairs from the pub, and further surprised when she said she needed more sleep and wanted to go back to bed. I tucked her safely into bed, then went downstairs.

The bar was empty. I made a pot of coffee, poured myself a cup, and sat on Dr. Schwartz’s stool. I heard my dad’s footfalls on the stairs behind me. Saying nothing, he poured himself a cup and refilled mine, pulling a stool up beside me. Andy Williams crooned from the jukebox.

Buoyed by my conversation with Burt the night before, I told my dad everything. They veil of my silence had been pierced. He listened, nodding as I spoke. When I told him about the night Jake tried to kill himself, silent tears streamed down his face.

“I should have let him die, Daddy. And sometimes, I wish I had. That sounds pretty selfish to you, I bet.”

“No, Kitten. It just sounds human. Watching someone you love suffer, and suffering yourself, is no way to live.”

“But you stayed with Mother. It feels so disloyal, but I don’t think I can—”

He patted my hand. “Jake is getting good care. You’ve seen to that. You’ve got to think of yourself and Ryan. There’s nothing disloyal about that.”

Andy Williams sang the final line of his song:
My huckleberry friend. Moon River and me
.

“You know, Katie, I need to say just one thing to you. No problem ever got better by emptying a liquor bottle. I know this firsthand. I searched for answers and for a cure for heartache in the bottom of a glass. It can’t be found there. I’m sorry for the pain you’ve been in. For the pain you’re all in. Some of it I inflicted, I know that. I’d give anything to go back to our cucumber days.”

“Huh?”

“Something my mother used to say. You can make a cucumber into a pickle, but you can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber. Once you know something, you can’t go back to not knowing it. It changes things. I wish I could turn back the clock. I wish we could be back in our cucumber days. It wasn’t right to deceive you. I should have told you the truth when you were old enough to understand.” Dad’s cheeks went slack. “But if you respect my fathering at all, I need to say something. I’ll say it but only once.” He wiped his lips with his palm. “Tully and Alice and I will help you and Ryan as long as we’re needed. This is your home. But there are some things only you can do. She needs your comfort. She needs you to be available to her—body, mind, and soul. Ryan’s without her father, she shouldn’t be without her mother, too. You’ll regret it if you leave that child alone to deal with all of this.”

Without another word, my dad pushed his stool away from the bar and climbed the stairs, leaving me with my coffee and my thoughts.

* * *

The corridors of UCSF’s Moffit Hospital rejuvenated me. More restful than any feather bed, more refuge than any sanctuary, work was where I could reclaim my more powerful self. At the hospital, I knew what to do.

Julio Juarez, or JJ, had been born with multiple birth defects—a cleft palate and severe facial and nasal deformities—that made it difficult for him to breathe and nearly impossible for him to talk. At seven years old, JJ had already undergone twelve surgeries. I was performing the thirteenth to repair his septum and soft palate, a procedure that would improve his breathing.

“Hi, little man,” I said as I entered the pre-op examination room.

JJ sat on the edge of the exam table turning a Magic 8-Ball over and over. He looked up at me, his black eyes shining. “
Cómo?
” I could hear the whistle of air going through his nose as he breathed, a sound that had earned him the nickname “harmonica boy” from the cruelest playground taunters.

I looked into Mrs. Juarez’s worried face, then to JJ’s teenaged sister, Theresa, to interpret. “He asked the 8-Ball if thirteen is an unlucky number for his surgery,” she explained.

I looked into the black ball that JJ clutched. The phantom message bobbed in the blue liquid. I waited, letting the triangled answer float to the surface.

“Signs look positive,” I said, showing the ball to Theresa, who interpreted the response. Heat rose to my face as I imagined the lie I’d have told if the ball had offered a bad omen.

“You see, Senora Juarez,” I said. “Even the Mattel Company agrees with my medical advice.” Theresa interpreted my words, and the proud woman gave me her delayed smile of understanding. Like any worried mother, Imelda Juarez was desperate for confirmation that she was making the right choice.

I explained the procedure JJ would be undergoing, being careful not to describe so much that the boy would become frightened. “He’ll go to sleep and we’ll repair the hole in the wall that is in his nose. Then we’ll build it up so that it will show his handsome face.” I smiled. “Air will pass through without making the whistle sound. He’ll sleep better and not have so many sore throats.” I looked at JJ and whistled, moved my hands in a
kaput
gesture.

I looked into the golden brown face of the child in front of me, imagining that, as a teenager, he’d take his earliest chance to grow a mustache to cover the scar on his upper lip. After bowing her head for a moment, Imelda Juarez made the sign of the cross and then hugged me. Without a glance to Theresa she asked, “
Tiene hijos?
”

“She wants to know if you have children,” Theresa translated.

I nodded. “A daughter.”

Without waiting for the translation, the worried woman responded. “
Por favor, trate a mi hijo como lo haría su propio bebé
.”

“She wants you to treat JJ just as you do your own child.”

“
S
í,” I said. I took JJ’s smooth chin in my palm. “
Sí
. Just like my own child.”

But what I thought was,
Even better than that
.

* * *

That night in the lowered lights of the pediatric floor, I stood at JJ’s bedside. From under the edges of the bandages on his face, deep purple bruises surrounded his swollen eyes. The pharmacy had provided him with his peaceful, painless sleep.

I thought about the bottomless glass of scotch that awaited me at the pub and wondered if the pharmacy might offer me simpler relief. I’d seen physicians try to navigate that slippery slope of writing their own prescriptions. Surrounded by medications, more than a few nurses and doctors sought escape from what troubled them with the capsules and tablets that passed through their fingers every day. For the first time, I sympathized with their inability to ignore the temptation.

Looking into JJ’s peace-filled face, how could I blame Jake for searching for the sense of serenity that came from being without pain? Maybe the heroin had offered that for a short time. Maybe he thought death would provide serenity forever. Medicine had failed Jake. Art was a fickle helper. Love was not enough. My treatment of JJ would repair his defect. Drugs eliminated the pain he would have suffered from the process. If only Jake could have such an outcome.

“Sleep well,
mijo,
” I whispered.

* * *

Wind whipped around me as I watched the swarm of six-year-old girls scurry down the soccer field in Larsen Park. This cold January day, the constant traffic on 19th Avenue provided only a distant hum behind the final championship game between Girl Power and The Skittles. An old Vought F-8 Crusader that served as playground equipment guarded the playground against invasion.

Two minutes remained, with the score tied. Mary K paced the sideline. The wind whipped strands of hair from her ponytail. Her thick glasses were speckled with mist.

“Come on, Girl Power!” Mary K shouted. “Teamwork. That’s it! Way to pass.”

Despite her efforts to hide it and the near-perfect prostheses Andra had designed, I could still detect the slightest hitch in my friend’s step as she paced. When the ball was kicked out of bounds close to Girl Power’s goal, Mary K signaled for a time out. She stood barely taller than the huddle of girls around her. “Sanchez, McAllister—” she scanned the group, “and Ryan, you’re in for Simon, Frist, and Abernathy. Switch up, ladies. This is it.” In unison, hands clasped in the middle of the huddle, the team belted out, “GIRL POWER, GIRL POWER, GO TEAM—HUP!”

The girls positioned themselves on the field, awaiting the kick from the sideline. They passed the ball, maneuvering it away from the hungry opposition.

“What a pass!” Mary K cheered. She turned to the on-looking parents with her arms spread wide. “That’s what I’m talking about!” The ball reached Ryan where she waited near the goal.

“Look alert, Ryan!” Mary K shouted.

I chanted under my breath.
Kick it. Kick it
.

Ryan power-kicked the ball. The goalie dove. When the ball whizzed past her grasp and into the net, the ref blasted the horn. “Game!” he shouted. “Game and championship to Girl Power, 4-3!”

The team exploded, screaming and flinging their arms around Mary K, her fists raised in victory. She broke away and jogged to the other side of the field, where she gave the other coach a hearty handshake. While the rest of the girls offered a chant of appreciation to their opponents, Mary K lifted Ryan onto her shoulders in a single sweep while parents snapped photographs.

Ryan caught my gaze, then scanned around me. I watched as her grinning face slumped. Ryan slid from Mary K’s shoulders until her feet returned to the ground.

She stomped toward me. “What did you do?” Her words were arrows shot from a taut bow. “What did you do to make Daddy not want to come to my game? He said he would come today.” After Burt arrived, he’d taken Jake to New York to see his original therapist and adjust to our separation. The best support that Burt could provide to me was to take care of Jake so that I could focus on Ryan. They’d been due to return, but flight delays had kept Jake from getting back in time.

I held out Ryan’s sweatshirt, indicating for her to put it on. “His plane got delayed. I had nothing to do with it.”

She grabbed the sweatshirt and flung it down to my feet. “He doesn’t want to be near you. You’re always mad at him for something.” Her face was twisted into a contemptuous smirk, her arms folded in front of her chest. I felt simultaneous urges to comfort her and to slap her.

Before I could lodge another defense, Ryan turned and marched away, her dark curls a frizzy corona, bouncing as she stomped. She arrived at the distant swing set, sat down with her back to me, and dangled there.

“Bloom’s a no-show again, I see,” Mary K said as she stepped up behind me. Welby, now thigh-high to Mary K, followed obediently at her heel.

It struck me as ironic that the one person who I could not yet talk to about all that had happened was Mary K. My pride still silenced me around her.

Welby sat at our feet and looked up, his furry face full of adoration. Mary K gave him a pat, then reached into her pocket for her pack of Marlboros. She lit a match and shielded it from the wind with the cup of her hand.

I looked back to the passing traffic. “Yeah, well. Things have been pretty bad between us.”

“No shit.”

“We’re separated. Selling the house. I’m looking for a place for Ryan and me.”