Samantha Adams: And you really believe MJ had it in her?
Deborah Taylor: Absolutely. She wasn’t the simple hippy child she liked to portray. Clever, really, to have her brother act as her surrogate. They had an interesting relationship, those two. Something I’ve never had, a close sibling. Or, I suppose a close anything once John and I lost our connection. My children have yet to forgive me for this whole thing. Even Charles, my eldest, who I could generally count on to support me, has disappeared. Refuses to return my calls. So MJ was an object of envy to me in that regard, she had a genuine relationship to call her own. You might laugh at me for such an unambitious desire. Most people, I can only assume, have these types of connections. Yet they’ve never come easy to me. John was it. Too bad I didn’t realize it in time.
Samantha Adams: Realize what?
Deborah Taylor: How much I still loved him.
66
Helen
MJ. POOR THING. YOU COULD almost see her gasping for breath, how foreign the air of this world was to her. I can’t grudge that she found a safe harbor, however temporary, with John. At least she apparently had six years of happiness. John gave her that. Not the greatest deal, but not the worst either. I daily see families torn apart, families that will never recover from loss, people who are scarred for life.
My situation is so different from MJ’s that I should feel some sort of survivor’s guilt. But I don’t. I am merely elated. I know at least part of this high is due to the second trimester hormones beginning to kick in; I feel as though I can conquer the world. I’m showing now, and people are cautiously commenting on it, tactfully trying to determine if I’m happy about the baby or not. My face alone should show how I feel about it. I had envisioned the second half of my life to be a solitary one. Then came John. And now a child.
I’m adjusting to the fact that it’s a boy. Enough not to let it affect my moods. I’m careful to eat all the nutrients I need, I’m careful to take my vitamins, and my OB says that things are looking very well after the last ultrasound.
I had a strange encounter the other day. I ran into an acquaintance, a friend of a friend who I had met at a party, and looking at my belly, she congratulated me openly, without any sense that this pregnancy had dubious origins. “And how is that delightful husband of yours?” she asked. “Is he over the moon?” “John is dead,” I said, and I realized that was the first time I had voiced it out loud. I’d always interacted with people who already knew the facts. The woman had turned pale and took a step back. I only half listened to her fumbled words of condolence, hit once again with the reality that John is dead, and of the weight of my great loss. The world had been a better place because he was in it. But this child wouldn’t have existed if John had been alive. I know that much about myself. I was not in control of my destiny or my body. When I realized I was pregnant I took a sick day from work—unprecedented—and went to the beach at the Pacific Palisades and walked for hours. John or the child? John or the child? I knew that telling John about the pregnancy would seal the child’s fate, that soon it would cease to be a child and become a mass of bloody cells in a medical biohazard waste container. It was the biggest decision I’d ever had to make, and I couldn’t make it, could not for the life of me make it. John’s death decided it absolutely. I didn’t have to choose. My way was clear.
At this stage, a little over four months, the child has fingers and toes, and is covered with downy hair. He floats in the amniotic fluid, and I’m careful to protect him from loud voices, cigarette smoke, angry people, even unpleasant images. I turn my eyes from anything that displeases me. I wish to remain a calm vessel for this child, to let no ugliness penetrate the lining of my womb. My patients’ parents look at my left hand, naked of any ring, and can’t decide whether to congratulate me or not. Some of them are openly envious; as I help usher their children out of this world I am bringing a new life into it. In the midst of terrible suffering, there is joy.