G
abriel and I drift together in August. After you've gone to bed, we stay up late talking. In the morning, watching you swim out too far, we reach for one another in worry. Our love for you is a magnet that draws us close. We sit out on the deck in the mornings and read the paper, the way we once did on the Upper West Side. He's still infuriated by all the political corruption and stupidity in the world. He's still threatening to do something about it one day.
We drift together, more out of proximity than love. He'd say I should speak for myself, that I never could appreciate how much he cared for me. He'd say he remembers everything differently. But what
I
remember is one night he pulls me into his room, half joking. “Tonight, you sleep in the big bed,” he says.
Laughing, we fall into each other's arms. But, Minnow, it's strange. No matter how vivid the memory, or great the longing, when you try to go back, you discover you can't. We look for the way it was, the way we once fit, the way it used to feel. But it's as if the past is a ghost floating above the two of us. We're strangers now, saying strange things. His touch is different. It's been affected by other lovers, and I've lost the knowledge of his body, his likes and peculiarities. So we're two changed people in his big bed, awkwardly making love, pretending we remember how.
When I open my eyes the next morning, I wonder if my attachment to him has been reignited and escape into the bathroom wrapped in a sheet. At breakfast, I direct my attention to you and your plans for the day. I avoid his glances. But within a day or two, it's almost as if it only happened in a dream.
Nearly every afternoon, the house fills up with his friends, business associates, and hangers-on. He's always drawn people to him like flies to meat. They bring offerings of rum and tequila, six-packs of beer. He talks and drinks while they listen and laugh. He regales his friends from New York with funny stories about the old days and promises his Latin American compatriots that one day soon he is coming home, and when he does, “There are going to be some changes, man. I'm telling you. You watch.” For emphasis, he snaps his thumb against the middle one. It makes a loud sound like a crack.
I can't tell if his friends believe him or only want him to think they do.
Sometimes Gabriel confuses me with the memory of his wife or other girlfriends. He repeats things that they've said and attributes them to me. He says, remember when such and such happened? And I don't remember, because I wasn't there, because it wasn't me.
None of his other women have given him a child, though. You come running toward us, brown from the sun, your long, wet hair full of sand and seaweed. You're so beautiful, it leaves even Gabriel speechless. No one else has ever given him anything that compares to you.
“Wipe your feet before you go inside,” he says.
“Okay,” you answer, stopping short. We watch you quickly brush the sand from your legs and feet with a towel. Your skin is the color of warm clay. You throw us a happy smile over a brown shoulder. You're having the summer of your young life.
Gabriel's house is modern and clean, ten times the size of our apartment. Your room, on the second floor, has a canopy bed and French doors that open to a terrace with a view of the Pacific Ocean. I watch you begin to take it for granted, just a little, and think: Good. I want you to be comfortable with beauty and privilege. You already know how to be poor and get by.
At sunset, we walk along the beach. The light is turning everything pink and gold. Up ahead, there are rocky cliffs with houses built upon them. From this distance, it looks as if the houses sit perilously close to the edge.
“Mom,” you say. “They look like they're going to fall into the ocean.”
“They do,” I agree.
And one day they will, although I don't tell you that. One day everything we know will be gone, taken by mudslides, erosion, or time. But life is resilient. New houses will be built upon the ruins and other girls will walk this stretch of beach.
Too soon, it is the end of August. On another perfect sunny day, we pile into the Mercedes and Gabriel drives us to the airport. I'm excited to be going home, but fear once we get there we're going to miss your father's larger-than-life antics, his funny stories and meandering explanations. We sing along with the radio at the top of our lungs. When another driver tries to cut us off, Gabriel jokingly screams and curses at him in Spanish. “Cover your ears,” I tell you, and you roll your eyes.
At LAX, we pull up to the curb at departures and Gabriel turns to you in the backseat. He hands you a twenty-dollar bill. “Minnow, you see that porter right there?”
“Uh-huh,” you say.
“Well, you give him that twenty before he takes your bags. Then he's going to treat you right. You hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Papi.” This is what you've agreed to call him, but it's hard for you to do it with a straight face, and it never takes.
We get out of the car, and he scoops you up in his arms. “You my girl?” He kisses you and squeezes you, too tightly.
“Gabriel!” You squirm and laugh. “Put me down!”
“See you soon, kid,” he says, rubbing your hair. He walks toward me. “You got everything?”
“All set,” I say, lifting our bags from the trunk of his car. “Thanks again.”
“One day, it's going to be you and me,” he says, placing his hand on my shoulder. “When we're sixty, after I finish everything I have to do. It's gonna happen, you'll see.” He plants a wet kiss on my cheek. When he's sixty or when I'm sixty? I wonder. What a crazy thing to say. Then I remember he'll forget he's said it, even before he drives away.
Your father gives us a wave and jumps back into the Mercedes. He revs the engine, honks the horn, and he's gone.
I
n the original 1995, at the end of summer, I go to see a doctor on the Upper East Side. Dr. Marshall is my sister's gynecologist, a specialist in the field of infertility. I've come to see him to find out why my period is so irregular. I haven't gotten it in more than three months. Dr. Marshall is an elegant gray-haired man with an Eastern European accent. He tells me to get dressed and meet him in his office.
Facing him across his desk, I tell him that, at first, I felt certain I was pregnant.
Dr. Marshall clears his throat. Gently, he tells me that he's certain I was not, because I'm done. I won't become accidentally pregnant again. He looks directly into my eyes. “I get so angry at these men who take up the most important years of a woman's life,” he says. “It makes me furious to think about their selfishness!”
What's the big deal? I think
.
Don't make such a fuss. I want to shut him up, to tell him that I'm not like most of his patients, desperate to become a mother.
Still, once I leave his office, I find the news has left me numb. I stop for a bottle of red wine on the way home to have with dinner.
I was three weeks in Asia on a promotional tour, walking the streets of Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore, thinking that I didn't have time to be pregnant. Although it was interesting to feel that I wasn't alone, my imaginary fetus with me as I visited temples and markets, played odd venues, and returned to my hotel. I wonder if could? I thought
.
How would I manage it?
On the day I was to leave for Asia, Arthur, my off-and-on-again boyfriend, producer, and drinking buddy, asked me to meet him on Madison Avenue in front of Cartier at nine in the morning. He was going to buy me a ring. It was a grand gesture. We'd get married, he said, but I didn't believe him; nor was I sure I even wanted to. I couldn't imagine Arthur as a father. Cartier didn't open until ten anyway. We waited for fifteen minutes in the rain, then abandoned the whole idea to go get breakfast.
I drink the bottle of wine and leave my dinner's ingredients to spoil on the kitchen counter. I watch TV, flipping through channels, looking for something of interest, something to push Dr. Marshall's diagnosis to the back of my mind.
There will be no more babies, not to have, or to flush down the drain
.
I
n his old age Tiger spends his days asleep in a chair. Goldy, the fish won last summer in a street-fair game, seems to watch from her bowl. Z and Cinnamon, the guinea pigs, play and groom one another. It's a good thing the animals have each other for company. Because although you love them, they might wither from neglect waiting for you to come home. At fourteen, you have homework, after-school activities, and a busy social life.
My day begins early. I wake you, feed the animals, and make breakfast. The phone is ringing before nine. I've got a day of appointments ahead and usually need to go by the office first. The market in New York City is heating up in the fall of 1996. Anyone with an ounce of ambition would be selling co-ops and condos by now, but I'm stuck in rentals. I'm not a natural salesman and still have trouble pretending to be one.
On Tuesday nights, I host an open mic at a coffee shop on Tenth Street called Joe's. I look forward to it all week and always try to have a new song to play. There's an unspoken rule at Joe's that the songs should be freshâwritten during the previous week.
The same core people come each week, along with others who arrive early to add their names to a sign-up sheet and wait their turn to play two songs. The cappuccino machine interrupts the mood so frequently that we no longer notice it.
Late in the evening, the regulars stick around to play longer sets. One boy, Jude Blake, has a talent so powerful that he begins to garner a buzz. Joe's is a tiny place, a storefront with a long counter and a few chairs. Jude fills it to the rafters. This kid plays his chest like a beat box. He sings like Nina Simone or Robert Plant. He's funny and as beautiful as a girl. A&R guys from all the record companies come to hear him play. Some keep coming even after Jude gets signed. They assume the room itself must be magic.
I'm thirty-eight that year, trying to pass for twenty-nine. My face is beginning to give me away. It's the first year I'm no longer pretty, in that pretty-girl way.
One night, I take Jude home with me and we're making out on the bed. You're at Jill Woo's, where you spend more and more time. She's your best friend, a tall, beautiful Chinese American girl.
Jude has his hand down my pants when he tells me he's in love with another singer. We continue to fool around for a minute, but then I push his hand away.
“What's wrong?” he wants to know.
“I think I'm just not in the mood for this,” I tell him. After he goes home, it hits me. Young men won't necessarily fall in love with me anymore, at least not the shiny ones like Jude Blake. I'm thirty-eight and the rules have changed.
At Joe's, I play my songs after I've introduced a lot of other songwriters and they've played their songs. I try to treat each person well, to be generous and professional. I'm rewarded with respect and a small following of my own. People request favorite songs, and when I play them, the room goes silent. It's a beautiful thing to be listened to, to be heard. I play a song written for my sister, called “Another Year.”
Take the memories off the line,
Put them in a pile of yours and mine.
They've been bleached out by the sun,
They don't belong to anyone . . .
When I sing it, I think of her, three years old, on Christmas morning, wearing an army helmet. She's living in Connecticut now. She's got two kids of her own.
I'm working on a new song that's about the way the past doesn't always feel like the past. I'm hoping to finish it in time for next week:
Someone says the past no longer exists,
But I don't think it's so . . .
One Tuesday night, I see Alan coming through the door and jump up to greet him. Some of the other songwriters get on his nerves, so he doesn't come to Joe's as often as I wish he would, but when he does, he brings his guitar. Having Alan play on my songs is like putting them in a beautiful frame. He makes me look good.
That night, an A&R guy from an independent label called Church Records happens to be in the room. In the 1990s independents aren't so independent. They're all financed by the big record companies and have access to real distribution, radio, and marketing. Plus, they have a cachet that the big labels lack.
Harry Garfield is about my age, a music fan. He dresses fashionably and has a good haircut. He's been in the business a long time already. He started his career at Warner Bros., and then went to Chrysalis, before landing at Church. He hasn't signed anyone of note lately, but he's still given a lot of leeway.
He approaches us at the end of the night. I'm breaking down the PA, something I do every week. The guys who work at the coffee shop carry the heavy speakers to the basement. Alan is watching me wind cables, telling me I'm doing it wrong.
Harry Garfield comes over, holds out his hand, and introduces himself.
“I think we've met, man,” Alan says, “when I was playing with Charlotte Winter.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Harry says. “What's Charlotte up to these days?”
I want to kick Alan. Doesn't he realize Harry Garfield isn't here to talk about Charlotte? She's without a record deal herself now.
“She's writing,” Alan says. “Working on new material.”
“Uh-huh,” Harry says, but he's looking at me. I'm careful not to stand in the unflattering overhead light. If I'm twenty-nine, there's still time to have a career. “You're so good. Why haven't I heard of you?” he asks, shifting from one foot to the other.
The confused excitement in my chest makes it hard to speak. I'm thinking so many things at once.
It's because I'm not really good enough. Because I've got a fourteen-year-old daughter I'm raising by myself. It's because I haven't ever really tried.
But what I say is: “
I'm
here every week. Where have
you
been?” It comes across as jaunty and charming, and I can tell he's buying it. He thinks I'm cool and pretty. He likes my songs and the way I sing them.
He takes a business card from his wallet. “Call me,” he says. “Let's figure out a time for you to come up to the office.”
I let my hair fall over my eyes. I'm playing someone I think I should be, channeling Juliette Binoche, maybe, in
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
. “I'll do that,” I say, and take the card from his hand. I put it in the back pocket of my jeans and pretend it doesn't matter to me that much, one way or the other.