“Definitely not,” says Natalie, resurfacing from her breathing debacle. “That’s not the way this works. You have early labor for a long time before you have active labor . . . and I did not have early labor. So these can’t be—”
Just then she looks horrified, and a huge gush of liquid goes all over the floor.
“My water broke!” she says. “Oh my God, this is not what I planned!”
“Ohhhkay. That’s it. Ambulance time,” Jeremy says, getting out his phone.
Natalie, who would still like to be running the world even while delivering a child, is not having it, however. “No. What we should do . . . is clean all this UP,” she says somewhat slowly in her new-normal voice. “When the amniotic fluid breaks, you still have time.” As though she’s reading from some textbook.
“Natalie, honey, Jeremy’s right. Let’s go to the hospital, sweetie.”
“But the birth plan!” she says. “I do not want an ambulance! Take me in your car. And call Brian. Tell him to bring my suitcase and the tennis balls and the lollipops.”
Then another contraction hits, and she has to stop talking.
“Jesus,” says Jeremy. “I’m definitely getting an ambulance.” And he starts to punch in numbers.
My sister holds up her hand, and as soon as the contraction is over, she says, “Take his phone, Marnie! I’ve got this! I have trained and prepared, and I am the warrior-queen, and I am READY. Do not get in my way because I—”
And then she stops. Falls back on the bench. Starts breathing through her mouth. Eyes round with panic.
Right after that one, there’s another.
And another.
Jeremy, looking more handsome and more in charge than I have ever known him to be, gives me a meaningful look and then quietly tells the emergency dispatcher the whole situation, and then when he hangs up, he suggests that I call my parents and Natalie’s husband. So I do as I’m told. No one answers, but I leave messages all around.
While we wait, he tells me it’s going to be okay, and somehow I believe him. Between contractions, Natalie is still screaming about her birth plan and yelling at me to get the car and then she gives us some information she learned in her childbirth class—information that no longer seems to apply, if you ask me.
“The warrior-queen is not going to be happy with you and me,” he whispers.
I am freaking out, but I say the wisest thing I can think of, which is, “When she gets a healthy baby by the end of this, all will be forgiven.”
And then I cross my fingers.
THIRTEEN
BLIX
On the morning of my Irish wake—aka the Blix Out party—I wake up to find the angel of death hanging out in my room.
So, okay.
“Hi,” I say to the angel. “I know it’s time. I can do this dying thing. I’ll die at the party if that’s what I’m supposed to do, although that is probably going to freak some of the guests out. But not me. I’m ready when death is.”
Then I lie back and close my eyes and ask for some white light to surround me, Houndy, and the entire borough of Brooklyn, and then, for good measure, the whole country and the world. I bless the whole planet. Little stars going all over the place.
The angel of death swirls up around the high ceiling, settles into one of the plaster cracks up there, the one that looks like a dog’s nose. That one may be my all-time favorite.
Houndy stirs next to me, moaning a little bit in his sleep. Then he sits up and does that epic throat-clearing thing he does every morning, making barking and snorting noises, so loud that they could stop traffic. It always makes me laugh, like Houndy is composed only of phlegm and old tobacco products from his misspent youth, when I happen to know for a fact that he is made of seawater and strong coffee and lobster claws.
I reach over and rub his back when he’s finished, and he turns and gives me a look I can’t quite read, which is weird because I can read all of Houndy’s looks. Always have been able to. He’s the least mysterious man on the planet, which is why it’s worked so well between us.
He is looking at me. “You’re not going to get well, are you?”
“I don’t know. I suppose there could still be a miracle. Anything can happen.”
“It’s getting bigger. You gave your tumor a name, and now it’s bigger. Don’t you think maybe you gave it too much love? You encouraged it.” Then he shakes his head. “Listen to me, talking like this. Like any of this is really real. Blix! Why the hell couldn’t you have used all your . . . whatever . . . your power to stop this from happening?”
“Oh, Houndy baby, everybody eventually has to make their transition, and I’ve done what I could, but maybe we have to face it that Cassandra is the way I’m meant to go. Come over here, you big old lug, and let me love on you for a minute.”
He says no but then he scootches over and holds on to me. I’ll bet he was a fine specimen when he was young, because he still has the strongest, broadest shoulders and the softest little earlobes and the reddest cheeks and a light in his eyes that you don’t find on most humans today.
One time he said to me, “You know, I had a great six-pack when I was young,” and I said to him, “Bragging about beer is so unbecoming for an old man.”
The truth is that he is still a beautiful man.
“Why do you want to leave me?” he says, his voice all choked up, and I can’t speak for a minute. I just rub his back in circles, closing my eyes tightly and drinking him in—the smell of him, the way his muscles ripple underneath my hands, the labored breathing that comes out of him in bursts.
This, I think, is my life. I am living my life. Right now. This is the moment that we have.
I stroke his head and look deeply in his eyes. There is no answer. I don’t want to leave him, but I believe we all create our own reality, so I must have planned this. I can’t figure it out, why it went down this way, and it hurts to try, to tell you the truth. I just know that some ailments aren’t meant to be healed, and that Houndy and I—and Marnie, too, and everybody that I know—are engaged in some kind of dance of our souls and we are here to help each other. So I tell him this, and he kisses me, and then in his regular voice he says I’m his very favorite lunatic, and maybe I could do a spell to make the lobsters simply jump out of the sea so he doesn’t have to haul them in today for the party, how would that be; and maybe while I’m at it, I could do a spell that his back would stop hurting, and that we would both live forever here in this perfect little brownstone that threatens every day to fall down around us but so far hasn’t.
“Okay, I’ll try to get the lobsters to come right to you,” I say. “And I also have another new project, that I didn’t tell you about yet. But I need to tell you.”
“I hope it’s you staying alive.”
“Sssh. I think Marnie and Patrick are supposed to be together. I’m working on that.”
He pulls away just slightly. “Marnie and Patrick? Are you out of your mind?”
“No, she’s right for Patrick. I’m convinced of it. They’re supposed to be together. That’s what all this has been about, Houndy. All of it. My meeting Marnie at the party. Patrick coming to live here in the first place. Who knows how far back this goes?”
“Oh, no,” he says. “What are you doing this for? Blix! You can’t possibly want to torment poor Patrick any more than he’s already been tormented.”
“Torment? Love is not torment,” I tell him firmly. “Trust me. These two are a match. I knew it the moment I saw her, but I just didn’t know I knew it.”
“Blix.”
“Houndy.”
“He doesn’t want love. He’s hurt.” He gets up out of bed, pretending to be all grouchy. “Patrick just wants to be left alone.”
“That is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said to me. Everybody wants love, and the ones who appear to want it the least actually need it the most. Remember when you first came to me? Huh? Remember that? You didn’t know you wanted love.”
“Yeah, but, with all due respect to your matchmaking ways, let’s not overlook that Marnie married Noah. What about that? He’s the one she wants.”