Heart the Lover (52)

‘If you guys were with me we’d be okay. We’d make a plan. Alone I would just need to get into a sleeping bag right away.’

‘You at the airport?’ Silas says. I barely pause and he says, ‘You’re not at the airport.’

‘I’m going to have to meet you in Houston.’

‘I bought you a flight from here with us.’

‘I know. I have to change it.’

‘I have been scrambling to put all the pieces together. I finally got Lorraine to take the dogs.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Planes aren’t easy.’ He means with Jack.

‘I know.’

‘The pressure.’

‘I told him.’

‘Told him what?’ He’s still on Jack.

‘I told Yash.’

‘Good for you.’ This is mean, this sarcasm, coming from Silas.

‘We had this fight right in the room with all these people around. And I told him and he wouldn’t speak to me and I have to go back. I can’t leave it like that.’

He is silent.



‘I will meet you in Houston tomorrow. I promise I’ll be there.’

‘Is this about Yash? Or is it about Jack?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You are his rock. He’s never seen you scared. He looks at you and he thinks, I’m going to be okay.’ He takes a breath. ‘You cannot fall apart on him now.’

‘I found it!’ Harry says. He’s grabbed the phone back. ‘I love you, mother.’ He hangs up.

Silas doesn’t call me back.



Sunday

A strip of blue light shines through the crack of room 508. I nudge the door open. They are both asleep, Sam curled on his side on the cot, two fists beneath his chin, a sharp pale ankle thrust out beyond the mattress, and Yash with his head tipped to one side the way he used to fall asleep reading, the johnny slipping off both shoulders, wires taped to his bare chest.

Oh, my love. My old love.

His breaths are faster, shallower. He’s working so hard to breathe.

I drop into my chair and take his hand over the bedrail.

He makes a little whelp when he opens his eyes and sees me. ‘I was scared you’d left,’ he says, muffled through the mask.

I shake my head. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

His breathing, so short, so labored, disturbs us both.

Sam is snoring softly.

‘Jack?’ he says.

Sam must have told him.

‘Wednesday.’

‘You have to go home.’



‘I’ll meet them there tonight.’

‘You should be with them now.’

‘I want to be here a little while longer.’

‘Then tell me,’ Yash says. ‘Please.’

I nod. ‘First, let me just—’ I examine the bedrail between us. I find the little button and push it. It slides down easily. He reaches for both my hands. We are much closer now.

‘Tell me everything.’

I tell him. I tell him that I didn’t know until early October, that I tried to write but ripped up every letter I started, that I called him at his dad’s and at work and he never called me back. That I was five weeks, then six weeks, then seven. The French cut-off was ten. I didn’t want to do anything without talking to him, I tell him, but I was scared to talk to him. I knew this was what had happened to his parents. He’d said once that if the laws had been different, he wouldn’t have been born. I didn’t know how he’d feel. I loved him so much, I tell him, I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think only for myself. ‘It felt like a decision we had to make together but I couldn’t reach you. By the time we talked in December there didn’t seem any point. We’d be in New York in a week. I thought we’d figure it out in person.’

His head rocks back and forth. His breaths are too small.

‘Yash.’



‘Go on. Please go on.’

After Carson’s, I tell him, I went to my mother’s in Phoenix. By then I was clear about what I wanted to do. I tell him how my mom took care of me, how that healed something between us. I tell him about the agency and the photo of my first-choice couple. ‘They reminded me of an older version of us. They looked like they really loved each other, amused each other.’

‘You had the baby?’

‘I did.’

He squeezes my fingers hard. He’s still got a lot of strength.

‘A girl,’ I say.

Above the mask his forehead crumples. ‘A daughter?’

‘Yes.’

He can’t say anything more for a while.

‘Where is she?’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. They couldn’t tell me. But every time I think of that photo, I know she’s fine. They were good people. I know it.’

‘Her name?’

‘I don’t know what they chose. I call her Daisy.’

He nods and tears run along the seam of his mask.

It’s nice without the railing. We are very close, my face only a few inches from his. I drop my head on his shoulder. ‘I had an hour with her. They let me give her a bottle. I wasn’t allowed to nurse her. They said it would make it harder on us both. She took that bottle like she knew exactly what she was doing. My boys weren’t like that. They sort of flopped around for a while before they figured it out.’ I feel him let out a puff of air, a laugh or a small sob. ‘Then a nurse came and got her. I checked a box, giving the agency permission to release my information to her. Whenever I move, I call and give them my new address. In case she asks for it.’